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	Rwandan War Crimes suspect sentenced to 6 Years Imprisonment by International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda   2 June 2006   The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has sentenced a man who supported broadcasts inciting genocide during the 1994 massacres to six years of imprisonment.   Joseph Serugendo, a former board member of the Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) and the National Committee of the Interahamwe za MRND, had pleaded guilty to charges of direct and public incitement to commit genocide and persecution, ICTR officials said today in a statement released from Arusha, where the court is based.   Mr. Serugendo admitted to having provided technical assistance and moral support to the broadcasting service in order to ensure its ability to continuously disseminate an anti-Tutsi message before and during the genocide, officials said, adding that he also acknowledged having used his influence within the MRND and Interahamwe to incite others to kill or cause serous harm to members of the Tutsi population.   “The Chamber took into account the gravity of those crimes, but also Serugendo’s guilty plea and his substantial cooperation with the Prosecution,” the statement said. “The Chamber noted that he expressed genuine remorse and a desire to help establish the truth regarding the events in Rwanda. This may encourage others to acknowledge their personal involvement in the 1994 genocide and contribute to national reconciliation.”   Mr. Serugendo has recently been diagnosed with a terminal illness. The court has asked the officials concerned to ensure he gets adequate medical treatment, including hospitalization. He was arrested in Gabon in September, 2005.   The court decision was led by Judge Erik Mase. It brings the number of persons tried by the tribunal to 28.
	US general orders probe into Iraqi civilian massacre by New York Times / ABC News Iraq   June 2, 2006   U.S. says it will cooperate with Iraqis on Haditha Inquiry, by John O"Neil & Richard Oppel.   The American military will cooperate with the Iraqi government in its investigation into reports of killings of civilians, the chief of staff for United States forces in Iraq said in Baghdad this morning.   On Thursday, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians, and other senior leaders in the new government demanded that the United States turn over documents related to reports that marines killed 24 Iraqis in the town of Haditha last year.   Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said today that President Bush was "troubled" by allegations now being investigated in connection with three incidents, news services reported. Along with the killings in Haditha, the investigations involved the fatal shooting of an Iraqi man in Hamadiya, a case in which military prosecutors say they are preparing murder, kidnapping and conspiracy charges against seven marines and a Navy corpsman, and the death of civilians in a March attack in Ishaqi, a village north of Baghdad.   At the time, American officials said that three civilians in Ishaqi had died when ground and air forces fired on a farmhouse after insurgents opened fire from outside it. Iraqi officials said that an entire 11-member family, from a 75-year-old grandmother to a 6-month-old baby, had died in the attack.   The BBC today broadcast footage it identified as coming from Ishaqi, showing the bodies of dead children, and quoted Iraqi police officials saying that the victims all died of gunshot wounds to the head or stomach.   The American chief of staff in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr., today called the various allegations "disturbing" and "frustrating". General Campbell said "We"re confident that the new prime minister and his government will work with us through this investigation," he said. "We"re going to give them whatever assistance they need."   General Campbell acknowledged that stress was high when "dealing with enemy combatants who do not abide by the rules of war. "It"s stress, fear, isolation and in some cases they"re just upset," General Campbell said. "They see their buddies getting blown up on occasion and they could snap."   But in his comments on Thursday, Mr. Maliki said violence against civilians had become a "daily phenomenon" by many troops in the American-led coalition who "do not respect the Iraqi people."   "They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion," he said. "This is completely unacceptable." Attacks on civilians will play a role in future decisions on how long to ask American forces to remain in Iraq, the prime minister added.   The denunciation was an unusual declaration for a government that remains desperately dependent on American forces to keep some form of order in the country amid a resilient Sunni Arab insurgency in the west, widespread sectarian violence in Baghdad, and deadly feuding among Shiite militias that increasingly control the south.   In response to a question as to whether the United States would permit American soldiers to be charged by Iraq, General Campbell said today that no status of forces agreement had yet been concluded with the new government, which took office late last month.   Mr. Maliki"s angry words were also a sign of the growing pressure he faces. His governing coalition includes Sunni Arabs who were enraged by news of the killings in Haditha, a city deep in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province.   Military and Congressional officials have said they believe that an investigation into the deaths of two dozen Iraqis in Haditha on Nov. 19 will show that a group of marines shot and killed civilians without justification or provocation. Survivors in Haditha say the troops shot men, women and children in the head and chest at close range.   Investigators are examining the role of senior commanders in the aftermath of the Haditha killings, and trying to determine how high up the chain of command culpability may rest.   The Washington Post reported Thursday that a parallel investigation into whether the killings were covered up has concluded that some officers reported false information and that superiors failed to adequately scrutinize the reports about the two dozen deaths.   In Baghdad, senior Iraqi officials demanded an apology and explanation about Haditha from the United States and vowed their own inquiry. "We in the ministers" cabinet condemned this crime and demanded that coalition forces show the reasons behind this massacre," Deputy Prime Minister Salam al-Zubaie, one of the most powerful Sunni Arabs in the new government, said in an interview. "As you know, this is not the only massacre, and there are a lot," he said. "The coalition forces must change their behavior. Human blood should be sacred regardless of religion, party and nationality."   Mr. Zubaie, also the acting defense minister, acknowledged that Iraqi officials would probably not be able to force the extradition of any troops suspected of culpability in the Haditha killings. But he said a committee of five ministers, including defense, interior and finance, would investigate the killings with the expectation that American officials would turn over their files..   On Wednesday, American troops near the restive city of Samarra shot and killed two Iraqi women, including one who might have been pregnant and on her way to a hospital, after their car did not heed what the American military command said were repeated warnings to stop.   In Baghdad, the top American ground commander in Iraq ordered that all 150,000 American and allied troops in the country receive mandatory refresher training on "legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield.."   01/06/2006   US general orders probe into Iraqi civilian massacre, by reporter Tony Jones. (ABC News Online – Lateline)   There are two US investigations into the Haditha massacre. The first one by army Major General Eldon Bargewell is looking at the trail of lies told by marines on the scene, and how far up the chain of command the deception went. The other is a military homicide investigation by NCIS, involving some 45 investigators. Well, even before their final reports come out the top US general in Iraq is expected to order all US and allied troops to undergo new core values training in how to treat civilians caught up in the conflict. But could it all be too little too late? Tony Jones interviews US strategic analyst, Harlan Ullman.   TONY JONES: You were in Vietnam. The prospect of another My Lai-style massacre must be deeply disturbing to anyone who lived through that scandal?   HARLAN ULLMAN: I find this inexplicable. I can understand soldiers or marines losing it when a buddy is killed or maimed, but my sense was that we were better-trained and better-disciplined than this. So this is a tragedy at every level. It"s a tragedy for Iraq and the families of the people who apparently were murdered. It"s a tragedy for American policy, it"s a tragedy for the army. You can say that these things happen, but this just discredits the United States. It"s a further stain on our national honour and our credibility. It is up with Abu Ghraib prison and the other excesses of treating enemy combatants. It is enormously destructive to our policy and our aims and ambitions and I hope somebody gets to the bottom of this.   TONY JONES: Indeed, it"s only starting to emerge really, isn"t it? As with Abu Ghraib, this is likely to have a steam roller effect. And I"m wondering, you talked about it being destructive of US policy, what effect do you think it will have on the US military operations in Iraq?   HARLAN ULLMAN: Well, very little. I think what this just shows is that the military instrument cannot resolve political issues and it just demonstrates how difficult things are that we have failed to anticipate this kind of an incident. I mean, this is one of the things that we should have prepared for much more thoroughly than we did.. I think that the Arabs in the Muslim world really believe that this is the way the Americans operate and they just say, "This is what you get when the invading force turns out to be an occupying force." Words are going to be destructive to American values, as simply "this is another incident of the Americans not doing the right thing". And when we try to say we"re out to democratise the world bringing our values, people look at us as hypocrites and quite frankly, they don"t take us seriously.   TONY JONES: My Lai hit the American public - or the realisation of what happened at My Lai - hit the American public at a time when people were really seriously doubting and objecting to what was going on in Vietnam. That same process appears to be going on inside the United States in relation to Iraq. Is it going to have a similar effect, do you think, in America? Let"s put aside what will happen in the Arab world.   HARLAN ULLMAN: .. I think the fundamental difference here is that Iraq is really up to the Iraqis to settle. There"s very little that we can do, besides providing support.. and I think at the end of the day, meaning over the next year or so, the Iraqi Government will ask us to withdraw..   TONY JONES: I"d like to talk a little bit about what certainly appears to have been a massacre and the lies that were told at the scene, initially by the staff sergeant, the squad leader of those men who went on the rampage. The big question is, how far up the chain of command knowledge went of what really happened at Haditha. Because right from the very beginning when that Iraqi cameraman filmed what actually had happened there, people must have known what really had happened and how that contrasted to what was claimed had happened.   HARLAN ULLMAN:. I suspect what did happen was that the squad completely lost control and once they realised what had happened, they decided they would paper this over saying they had killed 15 insurgents and hope that nothing happened. In the press of the conflict as it was going on in Iraq, there was probably a degree of reasonability and credibility on behalf of people up the chain of command. There was no reason to doubt their words until the "Time" magazine story came out in January. Then I think at that stage the investigation was really going to start with some degree of power.   TONY JONES: There"s a lot at stake here, isn"t there? Because overnight we saw the new Iraqi ambassador to Washington presenting his credentials to the President and saying one of his own relatives had been murdered effectively he believed by US troops, an investigation that hadn"t been pursued there, as well?   HARLAN ULLMAN: I carefully read the Iraqi press such as it exists, and scan websites. The violence in Iraq is at such a level that if that violence were taking place here, that would equate to about 150,000 Americans a year being killed in the insurgency. That"s half what we lost in World War II. The scope of this, even though it"s limited to the four provinces in around Baghdad and we"ve seen that marshal or emergency law has been declared in Basra in the south, the level of violence is extraordinary.   Baghdad still is without electricity half the time of the day, running water still rarely exists. Unemployment and under-employment still run at 50% or more. So you have these desperate situations there and it is not made better by this violence not seeming to improve.   I think what you see in terms of these armed militias who represent Sunni and Shi"ia sects, that these are the real forces for many ways. In many ways, they"re much more powerful than the police force. We have a stupendous mess on our hands now.   This is very pessimistic, but what we have to realise is that al-Malaki"s government - and it hasn"t been formed yet, they still don"t have a minister of defence, national security adviser or interior minister. This is when the really tough work starts. They"ve got four months to fix the constitution. There are still huge gaps, and tensions between the role of religious law versus civil law, the power of the Senate to the power of the provinces. What do you do about oil revenues, women et cetera. They"ve got four months to fix those things and then two months for the Iraqi public to vote again to ratify the amended constitution. That takes us to Christmas and so you have a built-in delay right now in Iraq at a time of violence.   We don"t seem, in the United States, to have much of a strategy here. We"ve not tried to internationalise the effort. And so the next months are going to be extremely difficult. It could go either way. But I think that we need some new policies. We need to take a look at alternatives. This discussion with Iran over its nuclear ambitions it seems to me could be expanded, because unless we get the regional powers involved, it seems to me bringing peace and stability and ending violence in Iraq is not going to happen for a very long time to come.
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