Prosecutor explains Mladic mix-up

The trial began — and then it stopped because of so-called “disclosure” problems. What’s up with that?

Prosecutors at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal today gave their first detailed explanation for the bungled opening of the Ratko Mladic trial. In a 42-page filing to the court, they blamed the fiasco on a computer “operator error” that had led to the non-disclosure of around 5,000 documents, or just over 3 percent of the disclosable trial record. They added that the omissions were largely “technical” in nature, and should not require a lengthy trial delay.

The trial, which began on May 16 with a summary of the prosecution case against the former Bosnian Serb military commander, was due to resume on May 29 with the calling of witnesses. But Judge Alphons Orie ordered an indefinite delay while he investigated “significant errors” by the prosecution in the disclosure process. Lawyers for Mladic have called for a six-month postponement of the trial, alleging “an unprecedented disclosure failure whose scope is without parallel in the history of the Tribunal.”

For those interested in the details, I have posted the latest prosecution filing here, along with the defense filing here, and e-mail correspondence between the prosecutor and defense here.

Anonymous Hackers Deface International Police Association Website [PHOTOS]

By Jacob Kleinman | Apr 27, 2012 02:52 PM EDT

Members of the hacktivist collective called Anonymous lashed out at the International Police Association http://ipa-iac.org (IPA) on Friday afternoon. The Anonymous hackers responsible left an angry message on the website’s homepage, stating that they defaced the page “for the lulz” (for fun) but also warned that they might have stolen some “sensitive data.”

It appears that Anonymous targeted the IPA for this hack because they saw a glaring weakness in the website’s security and not in order to expose the international organization for any illegal or immoral activity.

A message posted at the top of the page reads, “oHai [hello]… International Police Association (International Admin Center) you will see we haz [had] some #LULZ at your expense maybe you will fix your security issues and of course… we always recommend you NOT store admin passwords in PLAINTEXT For a site like International Police Association… w3 [we] really expected moar [more]… #LULZ the thin…”

The hack was self-credited to Anonymous, and confirmed by several posts on Twitter, but the particular hacker(s) responsible declined to take responsibility, fearing that the “feds” might be watching. The message continues to boast that Anonymous cannot be stopped because “There is no head to cut off motherfu–kers!!!” Before concluding with the words, ” F–k the police!!!!”

On Twitter several accounts associated with Anonymous boasted of the successful hacktivist attack on the International Police Association.

“DEFACED International Police Association http://ipa-iac.org/ by #Anonymous,” wrote a Twitter user called MotorMouth.

AnonOpsSweden also confirmed the cyber-attack, writing “International Police Association #hacked http://ipa-iac.org/ #Anonymous“

The International Police Association is the largest organization for police officers in the world according to Wikipedia, and is not connected to Interpol http://www.interpol.int/ . The IPA was founded by English police sergeant Arthur Troop in January 1950 under the model “Service Through Friendship” with the goal of creating friendly links to encourage cooperation between police officers across the world. The organization currently has around 400,000 members in 64 countries. Its main offices are based in Nottingham, England.

Source: http://ipa-iac.org/ / Screenshot

War crimes and proconsulship in the Balkans

Image via Wikipedia

Posted on March 8th, 2012 in the category Western Balkans by TransConflict

The logic of contemporary post-war intervention and proconsulship in both Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina is impossible to divorce from concepts of collective national guilt.

By Matthew Parish

Political liberalism is a tradition within international relations that finds its origins in the thinking of US president, Woodrow Wilson. An academic and an idealist, Wilson thought that relations between states could and should be based upon moral principles rather than the brutal and ever-shifting vaguaries of the balance of power that characterised European diplomacy in the nineteenth century.  This ideology has recurrently infected US politics, from the drive to promote decolonisation in the aftermath of World War II to the fight against communism in Indochina. It has also been a pervasive theme of western foreign policy in the Balkans since the end of the Cold War. As Yugoslavia disintegrated into bloody violence, US President Bill Clinton’s team of advisors determined that some sides were more responsible than others. The Serbs and to a lesser extent the Croats were brutal butchers, while Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians were for the most part victims of aggression inflicted by others.

This factual conclusion shaped the US administration’s moral vision of how post-war Balkan political geography ought to be configured. Bosnia’s Serbs and Croats must not be rewarded for their aggression. Bosnia must remain a unified, multi-ethnic country, notwithstanding the efforts of two of its three ethnic groups to tear the territory apart. By contrast Serbia must be dismembered, because Serbs cannot be trusted to treat their Albanian minority properly. This inference – from atrocity to moral outcome – would have suited Wilson’s reasoning admirably.

The premise of this argument – that Serbs in particular where disproportionately barbarous – is contested, but significant empirical evidence in its favour exists at least in the Bosnian case. Atrocities committed against Muslim civilians in Srebrenica, Brcko, Omarska, Zvornik and other places were broadcast around the world and shocked the conscience of the international community. The siege of Sarajevo is cited as another heinous war crime, and the arbitrary shelling of a city of half a million people for three and a half years was a shocking cruelty. Sieges usually are so. The majority of commentators accept that Serb forces were disproportionately responsible for the carnage of the Bosnian war. Whereas the population of Bosnia in 1991 was 44% Bosniak, 31% Serb and 17% Croat, the number of deaths in the Bosnian war were 66% Bosniaks, 25% Serbs and 8% Croats. Thus relative to population sizes, Bosniaks suffered disproportionately while Croats were disproportionately fortunate.

Serbia wants to join global counter-terrorism pact

Image via Wikipedia

15. February 2012. | 08:46

Source: Tanjug

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Dacic conveyed this position to the Australian Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism Bill Paterson in the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Serbian Interior Ministry released in a statement.
Serbia would like to join the global counter-terrorism pact, in which it would assist the tracking down of criminals in cases such as the recent one relating to an Australian citizen born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dacic said.

Dacic kicked off Monday a visit to Australia by a meeting with Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen on the possibilities of introducing visa facilitation for Serbian citizens.

The Hague makes capital out of criminal courts

Image via Wikipedia

By Sara Webb

THE HAGUE | Tue Feb 14, 2012 6:36am EST

Feb 14 (Reuters) – In a tiny office on Zeestraat 100, Alice Helbing puts the final touches to a script for an imaginary counter-terrorism exercise in the Netherlands. A few doors down the corridor, staff from a legal aid group are digging into real war crimes in Ivory Coast.

Nearby at Humanity House, a small museum devoted to raising awareness about aid for the victims of disaster, visitors can find out what it’s like to be a refugee – to have to flee your home, leaving dinner on the table, with no money, no mobile phone, no passport, just the clothes you are wearing.

Behind its staid Dutch exterior, The Hague has become a hothouse for human rights ventures and international legal services, invigorating the local economy with new jobs and an influx of mainly foreign professionals.

But it has also become so much of an international hub that sometimes locals feel like strangers in their own town.

“The Hague has become an incubator, a sort of legal Silicon Valley,” said one diplomat who follows the courts.

Many of the rights and legal groups are housed in two utilitarian office buildings near the city centre: At Zeestraat 100, staff from non-government organisation Africa Legal Aid rub shoulders with game designer Alice Helbing and her fellow conflict resolution trainers from the Pax Ludens foundation. Around the corner, Laan van Meerdervoort 70 provides space for groups like the United Network of Young Peacebuilders.

The policy-makers, foreign or defence ministry officials, and students who attend Pax Ludens’s training sessions on negotiating tactics can role play to get a taste of what it is like to be U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, or to head the Israeli and Saudi Arabian delegations and hold secret talks over the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Review – Drug Traffickers are restructured into 28 Cartels-ZETA

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 | Borderland Beat Reporter Chivis

From Zeta Weekly and  posted on BB Forum by Havana
Written by: Rosario Castro Mosso and Enrique Mendoza Hernández
Translated from Spanish

Traffickers are restructured

At the end of Vicente Fox’s term, Mexico had seven cartels, while President Felipe Calderon recognizes only 11 criminal organizations in 2011. Leaders of thugs converted into little bosses , divided and struggled for criminal control in the 32 states of Mexico. It is known, they are killing and denouncing one another. As are armed wings, are dedicated to all crimes: the movement of drugs, domestic sales in Mexican municipalities, kidnapping, extortion and trafficking in persons, without that the big mafias can not control them.
The federal government constant hits on the drug cartels have caused reorganization, admitted in May 2008 by the President of the Republic, Felipe Calderón.
Indeed, since December 2006, each time you stop a capo comes three or even 10 more trying to replace him. This multiplying effect has generated cell operation, usually as assassins, whose ambition and betrayal, end up converting into little “cartelitos” fighting for territorial control and expansion of drug trafficking.
Of the seven drug cartels operating in Mexico with the arrival of the Calderon administration in 2006, pruning has brought forth a multiplication by 400 percent. Currently governments are coordinated fighting at least 28 criminal groups.
Besides the large cartels, recognized by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), as the Arellano Felix, Colima, the Juarez, Sinaloa, the Gulf, the Millennium and Pedro Diaz Parada.
Now authorities and society must confront not only drug trafficking but the kidnapping of people, extortion of businesses, and murders committed by these cells empowered by thugs:
Los Zetas
Los Matazetas
Cartel del Acapulco
Gente Nueva
Cartel del Pacifico Sur
Cartel de Acapulco
Cartel de Guadalajara
Cartel del Centro Narco
Cartel de Jalisco Nuevo Generation
Cartel del Milenio
La Familia Michoacana
Los Caballeros Templarios
The Pelones
Los Gueros
La Barredora
Los Aztecas
La Linea
In Baja California, Three are Los Teos and independent groups of Guadalajara and Los Aboytes in the State of Mexico and the Anthrax in Sinaloa, and a number of criminal groups that the PGR announced in 2011, are on the verge of annihilation.  The truth is that of the 28 of the registered groups of drug traffickers ZETA , noticed during his “Message to mark the fifth year in office,” on December 8 in Monterrey, Calderon only recognized 11 cartels: Gulf, Zetas, La Familia, Pacific, New Generation Jalisco Cartel, La Resistencia, Beltrán Leyva, Arellano Felix Juarez, Knights Templar and La Barbie.

Mexican Navy Takes Over Traffic Police in Top Port City

Image via Wikipedia

Authorities say the Mexican Navy has taken over traffic policing duties in the port city of Veracruz, which has been plagued by drug cartel violence.
Veracruz state Gov. Javier Duarte said in a statement Monday that two rear admirals are now the directors of traffic police in the neighboring cities of Veracruz and Boca del Rio.
The move is part of an effort to root out corruption from law enforcement and start from zero in the city of Veracruz.
In December, the police departments in both cities were disbanded and taken over by the Navy. Authorities said the departments had been infiltrated by the Zetas drug cartel. In Mexico traffic police are separate from other police departments.