Whistleblowers Snowden, Bolkovac Comment on Report

Minova Trial Shows Need for Urgent Reforms

UN, AU Should Urgently Increase Civilian Protection

The long-awaited trial of Hissène Habré, was adjourned almost as soon as it was opened, as an outburst from the former dictator of Chad caused a scene in the courtroom.

The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo and United Nations peacekeepers should urgently take steps to arrest and transfer Sylvestre Mudacumura, military commander of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), to the International Criminal Court.

Victims Bring Dictator Hissène Habré to Trial: The inauguration of a special court in Senegal marks a turning point in the long campaign to bring to justice the former dictator of Chad. Habré is accused of thousands of political killings and systematic torture during his presidency, from 1982 to 1990.

Hilarion Warren Joseph, 46, a decorated veteran of the first Gulf War and a longtime lawful permanent resident, with his 13-year-old son, Japeri, who wears the jacket from Joseph's US Army uniform. After the war, Joseph said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and attempted suicide three times. He was eventually convicted of transporting guns without a license, which ultimately led the US government to seek to deport him for an "aggravated felony." After three years of immigration detention and litigation, Joseph was able to fight deportation, and now lives with his son Japeri in Brooklyn, New York. But he knows many veterans are not so fortunate and end up exiled from the country they served.

Robin Reineke, director of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, holds the personal effects of unidentified border crossers. Such personal effects are kept at the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner in Tucson, Arizona, to match families with missing migrants who were last seen alive crossing the border. According to Reineke, from 1990 to 1999, an average of 12 remains of border crossers were brought into the Pima County Medical Examiner's office per year. From 2001 through the present, the average number of remains is 164. "There's been this discourse that security is the automatic obvious need on the border ... more walls, more border patrol, more surveillance, more unmanned aerial drones," she said. "That's the type of strategy that we saw change our landscape into one of death, and it's heartbreaking to see the same type of conversation happening now." This video is part of the feature Torn Apart: Families and US Immigration Reform.

Fermina Lopez Cash, a 47-year-old woman from Guatemala, sits in her home with a photo of her 13-year-old son, Omar, who died in July 2010 in the Arizona desert trying to cross the US-Mexico border to join her and his older siblings in Phoenix. Only 9 years old when she left, Lopez Cash said Omar begged to come to the US as well. A middle-aged woman offered to come with him, and they hired a "coyote" (smuggler) to take them across the border. Almost three years later, the remains of a teenage boy that had been found in the Arizona desert along with those of an older woman, were confirmed as those of Fermina's son.