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	Timor-Leste: UN to boycott truth panel unless it bars amnesty for gross abuses by Marie Okabe United Nations East Timor   26 July 2007   United Nations officials will boycott a commission set up jointly by Indonesia and Timor-Leste to foster reconciliation after the latter’s bloody struggle for independence, unless it is precluded from recommending amnesty for crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights.   UN policy “is that the Organization cannot endorse or condone amnesties for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes or gross violations of human rights, nor should it do anything that might foster them,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesperson said today. “It is the firm intention of the Secretary-General to uphold this position of principle.”   Spokesperson Marie Okabe noted that the Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF), established by the two countries in 2005, had on several occasions invited former staff members of the UN Mission in East Timor (UNAMET), including former Special Representative of the Secretary-General Ian Martin, to testify at its proceedings.   But the CTF’s terms of reference into the bloodshed that followed Timor-Leste’s vote for independence from Indonesia in 1999, and in which nine local UN personnel were killed, do not preclude it from recommending amnesty “in respect of acts that constitute a crime against humanity, a gross violation of human rights or a serious violation of international humanitarian law,” she added.   “Unless the terms of reference are revised to comply with international standards, officials of the United Nations will, therefore, not testify at its proceedings or take any other steps that would support the work of the CTF and thereby further the possible grant of amnesties in respect of such acts,” she said.   Today’s statement follows a report to the Security Council last August from then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan in which he said that it “would be deeply regrettable, however, if the reconciliation process foreclosed the possibility of achieving accountability.” Ms. Okabe said that report “clearly outlined” the UN’s position.   “Though it will not take part in the process, the United Nations is informed about the ongoing proceedings of the CTF and wishes, therefore, to also take this opportunity to say that it stands unequivocally by the exemplary work of UNAMET during the popular consultation in 1999 and throughout the course of its mandate,” she noted.
	European Rights Court orders Russia to pay damages in Chechnya Killings by Anton Troianovski The Washington Post   26 July 2007   The European Court of Human Rights found Russia liable Thursday for the deaths of civilians in a Chechen village in 2000 and ordered the government to pay a total of about $200,000 to five relatives of those who died.   The court castigated the Russian authorities for failing to seriously investigate the "cold-blooded execution of more than 50 civilians" in the village of Novye Aldy. "In the Court"s view, the astonishing ineffectiveness of the prosecuting authorities in this case could only be qualified as acquiescence in the events," said the unanimous decision by the seven-judge panel.   The ruling is part of a series of decisions by the court this year finding Russian servicemen liable for atrocities committed in Chechnya, where government troops have fought separatists on and off since 1994. About 200 complaints related to the conflict have been filed at the court.   "This decision is very important because it recognizes the violation of human rights in the course of a large-scale operation," said Oleg Orlov, director of the human rights branch of Memorial, a Moscow-based group that helped represent the families before the court. "Civilians were consciously, premeditatedly destroyed."   Philip Leach, director of the London-based European Human Rights Advocacy Center, which also helped represent the relatives of 11 of the victims, called the court"s language on Russia"s failure to investigate "unprecedented."   The operation at issue in the case, Musayev and Others v. Russia, took place Feb. 5, 2000, in the southern suburbs of Grozny, the Chechen capital. "Numerous houses were burnt down and civilians killed," the court"s decision said.   The court found that Russian authorities did not begin their investigation into the killings until a month later and that it was fraught with "a series of serious and unexplained delays and failures to act." Despite evidence that included eyewitness accounts and recovered bullets and shell casings, Russian authorities achieved "no meaningful result whatsoever . . . in the task of identifying and prosecuting the individuals who had committed the crimes."
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