Editor’s Note: Rights & Wrongs is a weekly column on the world’s major human rights-related happenings. It is written by regular WPR contributor Juliette Terzieff. MEDICS’ DEATH PENALTY CONVICTION UPHELD — The Libyan Supreme Court decided Wednesday to uphold earlier convictions of five Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor on charges of intentionally infecting over 400 Libyan children with the HIV/AIDS virus. The court’s ruling was widely expected and — as it signals the official end to the appeals process — paves the way for an out-of-court settlement to financially compensate the children’s families and bring an end to the [...]
LONDON – Three militia generals found guilty for their roles in Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war are expected to be sentenced Monday in the first step towards winding down the four-year, $90 million proceedings at the ad hoc war crimes tribunal. “The AFRC committed untold horrors — mutilations, rapes, massacres, abductions — throughout the towns and villages of Sierra Leone,” Human Rights Watch researcher Corinne Dufka told WPR, who herself documented scores of cases of abuse by those under the command of the generals in custody. “They effectively waged war against the civilian population, leaving a trail of loss and [...]
Editor’s Note: In March, Kurt Pelda, Africa Bureau Chief of the Swiss daily the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, traveled to eastern Chad on the border with the Sudanese crisis region of Darfur. Over 200,000 Sudanese refugees live in eastern Chad, having fled the violence in Darfur. The region likewise serves as staging grounds for the Darfur rebels fighting against the Sudanese government. During his three weeks traveling in the region, Pelda kept a diary. By virtue of the author’s firsthand observations and his numerous conversations with local Sudanese and Chadians, foreign aid workers and Darfur rebels, Pelda’s diary provides a portrait [...]
