• Syria: Visit Reveals Torture Chambers
    May 17, 2013
    Government security branches in Raqqa city hold documents and potential physical evidence indicating that detainees were arbitrarily detained and tortured there while the city was under government control. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the State Security and Military Intelligence facilities in Raqqa, now under the de facto control of local armed opposition groups, in late April 2013.
  • AU: African Groups Call for Justice at Summit
    May 16, 2013

    Civil society groups from more than 30 African countries called on African Union (AU) member countries to ensure that the AU promotes justice for grave international crimes, in a letter to the foreign ministers of African Union member states which was made public by the groups today.
     

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War Crimes/Crimes Against Humanity

  • Syria: Visit Reveals Torture Chambers
    May 17, 2013
    Government security branches in Raqqa city hold documents and potential physical evidence indicating that detainees were arbitrarily detained and tortured there while the city was under government control. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the State Security and Military Intelligence facilities in Raqqa, now under the de facto control of local armed opposition groups, in late April 2013.
  • AU: African Groups Call for Justice at Summit
    May 16, 2013

    Civil society groups from more than 30 African countries called on African Union (AU) member countries to ensure that the AU promotes justice for grave international crimes, in a letter to the foreign ministers of African Union member states which was made public by the groups today.
     

  • Letter to Foreign Ministers on International Justice in Africa in Advance of AU Summit
    May 14, 2013

    We, the undersigned African civil society organisations and international organisations with a presence in Africa, working on human rights and international criminal justice, are pleased to congratulate the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU), on the occasion of its 50thAnniversary.

  • Syria: Brigade Fighting in Homs Implicated in Atrocities
    May 13, 2013
    Human Rights Watch has reviewed graphic evidence that appears to show a commander of the Syrian opposition “Independent Omar al-Farouq” brigade mutilating the corpse of a pro-government fighter. The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites. The same brigade was implicated in April 2013 in the cross-border indiscriminate shelling of the Lebanese Shi’a villages of al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed
  • Is This the Most Disgusting Atrocity Filmed in the Syrian Civil War?
    May 13, 2013
    Even by the standards of Syria's ever-worsening stream of atrocity and massacre videos, the latest footage from the country cannot fail to shock for its sheer savagery. The video, posted on May 12 but filmed on March 26 near the Syrian town of Qusayr, on the border with Lebanon, opens by calmly filming a rebel commander cutting open the chest of what we assume is a deceased pro-Bashar al-Assad fighter, removing his heart and liver with surgical precision and sang-froid.
  • Guatemala: Rios Montt Convicted of Genocide
    May 10, 2013
    The guilty verdict against Efraín Ríos Montt, former leader of Guatemala, for genocide and crimes against humanity is an unprecedented step toward establishing accountability for atrocities during the country’s brutal civil war, Human Rights Watch said today.
  • Syria’s River of Death
    Apr 30, 2013
    Syrian men don’t usually cry. But for Yasser, the memory of his son, Mohammed, hurt too much. Sitting in the dark inside his shop on a bustling market street in Aleppo, the 63-year-old, hunched over in his chair, kept asking me: “Why did he deserve to die that way?” Yasser’s grief over his son who was apparently executed is shared by far too many Syrians caught up in this grisly war.
  • Syria: New Air, Missile Strikes Kill Civilians
    Apr 26, 2013
    New Syrian government air and missile strikes are causing high civilian casualties in opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo in violation of the laws of war. A Human Rights Watch team in northern Aleppo province has investigated recent attacks that killed scores of civilians and destroyed dozens of civilian homes without damaging any apparent opposition military targets.
  • Chad: Don’t Welcome ICC Fugitive
    Apr 25, 2013
    The government of Chad should arrest Abdelraheem Mohammed Hussein, the defense minister of Sudan. He is expected to attend a conference in Chad on April 25 and 26, 2013, according to news reports
  • Building a House on a Sand Pile: The Cost of Ignoring Justice in Côte d’Ivoire
    Apr 22, 2013

    Nearly two years have passed since the end of Côte d’Ivoire’s brutal five-month long post-electoral crisis, which resulted in the slaughter of at least 3,000 civilians and the rape of 150 women.

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