Tribunal

BAGHDAD -- U.S. officials yesterday sidestepped the demand of Iraq's prime minister for the immediate handover for execution of three former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime. The U.S. military issued a written statement reaffirming the position of the military and U.S. Embassy that the three condemned men would remain in U.S. custody until the Iraqi government has sorted out disputed procedures for death sentences handed down by Iraq's high tribunal for war crimes. The three men received death sentences in June for their roles in Hussein's internal campaigns during the 1980s that killed up to 180,000 Kurds.

What should be done with Omar Khadr? Twenty years old, Khadr has been held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2002 for a crime he is alleged to have committed when he was 15, an age at which under international law he is considered to have been a child soldier. On Monday, two U.S. military commissions in separate decisions dismissed charges against Mr. Khadr and a second prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, on the ground that the process the Bush administration set up does not comply with the new U.S. Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress last fall to correct the failings of a previous law. Even before Monday's trial, the U.S. said it was unlikely it would release Mr. Khadr, or any other detainee.

GRASTICA, Kosovo -- With cold weather descending on the Balkans, war-crimes investigators have ended their first season of work on the grim task of unearthing Kosovo's dead. The exhumation at the old mill was one of the last of the year.Months earlier, a dozen men had been buried by a stream in unmarked shallow holes here, a mile from the nearest paved road, and covered with a foot of soil. Now, using shovels and trowels, a team of war-crimes investigators was digging them out.The graves had been found in a quiet, secluded valley in the hills of eastern Kosovo.

WASHINGTON -- War crimes prosecutors are using some of NATO's most secret intelligence to build cases against Yugoslavia's top political and military leaders. But there are concerns that the alliance's diplomatic deal-making will allow Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to escape justice.While leaders in the United States, Russia and other countries work feverishly on a diplomatic plan to end the 8-week-old conflict, prosecutors with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, Netherlands, are collecting information on the roles of Milosevic and his top commanders in atrocities in Kosovo.

WASHINGTON -- Investigators at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, have concluded that the Croatian army carried out summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and "ethnic cleansing" during a 1995 assault that was a turning point in the Balkan wars, according to tribunal documents."

Albanian refugees fresh from the crime scene of Kosovo have documented the world's case against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.By bearing witness to the brutal campaign of expulsion and massacre carried out by his army and police force, they brought on the May 27 indictment of Milosevic by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in The Hague, Netherlands.But the tribunal's investigators, an idealistic bunch with an eye on the bigger picture, are working an even bigger case, one that has yet to yield results.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- She has never held political office. She is not the head of a multimedia entertainment empire. Yet, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald is an enormously influential woman: She is president -- in effect, chief justice -- of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and oversees the appeals chamber for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.These twin tribunals were created by the United Nations to address the atrocities perpetrated against civilians in those countries.

Survivors: Ethnic Albanians mourn relatives yesterday in the village of Racak, where at least 45 Albanians were massacred Friday by Serbian paramilitary police. Fighting flared again yesterday as the War Crimes Tribunal prepared to investigate. (Article, Page 9A)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The International War Crimes Tribunal issued an arrest warrant yesterday for President Slobodan Milosevic, charging him and other senior Yugoslav officials with crimes against humanity in Kosovo, including the murder, forced deportation and persecution of ethnic Albanians.The charges -- including the forced deportation of 740,000 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo this year and the murder of more than 340 identified Albanians -- in effect branded the Yugoslav government as a criminal regime.

JEAN-PAUL Akayesu was neither the biggest nor smallest fish in the Hutu genocide machine that tried to wipe out Rwandan Tutsis in 1994.A mayor caught up in the madness of superiors, he was found guilty by three judges after an international tribunal's trial lasting from Jan. 9, 1997, to Sept. 2, 1998. He is guilty on nine counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, rape, murder and torture. The 300-page judgment links him to the deaths of 2,000 people.Jean-Paul Akayesu has made history. He is the first person convicted of genocide, a half-century after the world ratified that as a crime to be judged and punished.

NAIROBI, Kenya - The ringleader of the 1994 Rwanda genocide was sentenced yesterday to life in prison for his role in the early days of an ethnic slaughter that eventually killed an estimated 800,000 people. Theoneste Bagosora, 67, was the highest-ranking military officer convicted at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. The former colonel's prosecution was viewed as a significant step in efforts to punish war crimes. "This victory sends a message to people like the warlords in Darfur or those committing horrendous rapes and killing in Congo," said Barbara Mulvaney, a Southern California attorney who served as chief prosecutor.

The U.S. government got a guilty verdict yesterday in its prosecution of Osama bin Laden's driver in the first war crimes trial since World War II. But it's a hollow victory because the military tribunal system, as shaped by the Bush administration, remains a flawed instrument of the war on terror that contravenes the principles of American justice. A jury of six military officers convicted Salim Hamdan of "material support" for terrorism, the lesser of the two charges against him but one broad enough to easily ensnare a small-time player such as the Yemeni.

Ex-Kosovo leader acquitted by U.N. PARIS --The United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia acquitted Ramush Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo, of all charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in a surprise decision yesterday. Judges found that prosecutors had failed to prove a deliberate campaign to kill Serb civilians in Kosovo or expel them in the late 1990s, when Haradinaj led the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbian security Forces. The tribunal also acquitted one of two other defendants, Idriz Balaj.

BAGHDAD -- U.S. officials yesterday sidestepped the demand of Iraq's prime minister for the immediate handover for execution of three former officials from Saddam Hussein's regime. The U.S. military issued a written statement reaffirming the position of the military and U.S. Embassy that the three condemned men would remain in U.S. custody until the Iraqi government has sorted out disputed procedures for death sentences handed down by Iraq's high tribunal for war crimes. The three men received death sentences in June for their roles in Hussein's internal campaigns during the 1980s that killed up to 180,000 Kurds.

Forty Lebanese members of parliament belonging to the pro-Western, anti-Syria March 14 majority bloc reside in Tower 3 at Beirut's Phoenicia Intercontinental Hotel. With plush couches, stereos and flat-screen TVs, the two-bedroom units at the Phoenicia are swank. But the lawmakers aren't guests; they're prisoners. To get into the Phoenicia, you have to traverse no fewer than three security checkpoints, pass through a metal detector and show ID. Armed escorts from Lebanon's Internal Security Forces accompany guests to their rooms.

What should be done with Omar Khadr? Twenty years old, Khadr has been held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba since 2002 for a crime he is alleged to have committed when he was 15, an age at which under international law he is considered to have been a child soldier. On Monday, two U.S. military commissions in separate decisions dismissed charges against Mr. Khadr and a second prisoner held at Guantanamo Bay, on the ground that the process the Bush administration set up does not comply with the new U.S. Military Commissions Act, passed by Congress last fall to correct the failings of a previous law. Even before Monday's trial, the U.S. said it was unlikely it would release Mr. Khadr, or any other detainee.

Washington -- A Saudi suspected of being a major player in the Sept. 11 attacks, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, has denied accusations that he played a key supporting role, saying he never wired money to the hijackers and didn't know specifics of the plot, according to a transcript of his military commission hearing released yesterday. U.S. authorities, as well as the Sept. 11 commission that investigated the attacks, have long alleged that al-Hawsawi was a top lieutenant of the plot's mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

WASHINGTON -- A veteran al-Qaida operative has confessed to being the mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, as well as a key conduit between Osama bin Laden and a terrorist cell in East Africa, according to a transcript of a military tribunal hearing released yesterday by the Pentagon. The transcript was the fourth from the hearings the military is holding in private for 14 high-value terror suspects who were kept in secret CIA prisons before they were sent last fall to the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

PANAMA CITY, Panama -- Panamanian voters overwhelmingly approved yesterday a $5.2-billion proposal to expand the country's national treasure, the Panama Canal. With 64 percent of votes counted, ballots in favor of the project led those opposed, 78.7 percent to 21.3 percent, prompting Panama's electoral tribunal to declare the "yes" vote victorious. That gave the green light to the first major modification to the 50-mile waterway since it opened in 1914. President Martin Torrijos staked his considerable popularity on voters approving the proposal, which he described in a recent interview as the "chance of a lifetime" for Panama.

Sept. 30 1946 An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.