Mladic could be extradited in 24 hours

A member of the Serbian gendarmerie looks out from a car driven in the Special Court, where Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic is being held, in Belgrade yesterday.

Serbia may send former Bosnia Serb military leader Ratko Mladic to face genocide charges in The Hague within the next 24 hours, a justice official said today.

“It will happen within the next 24 hours, as soon as the appeal arrives to the court and that is expected today,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He declined to give more details of the extradition plans.



“The panel of three will swiftly decide on the appeal, they will almost certainly reject it, the justice minister will sign extradition papers and off he goes,” he said.

The International Criminal Tribunal indicted Mladic for genocide in the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian War.

Serb security agents found the fugitive general last week after 16 years on the run.

Court officials and police allowed Mladic an hour-long visit to his daughter Ana’s grave in a graveyard on the outskirts of Belgrade, the official said. A motorcade of armoured jeeps brought Mladic back to his prison cell.

Ana Mladic committed suicide in 1994 and before he went underground in early 2000s the general was frequently seen visiting her grave.

Mladic’s lawyers say the 69-year-old, who was captured alone in a farmhouse, is mentally unstable and too sick to be extradited to the tribunal.

Mladic’s son and grandchildren, who live in Belgrade, visited him in prison yesterday.

Kandahar jail governor detained after mass breakout

General Dastgir points to the way out — one at a time — at the time the jailbreak was discovered on 25 April, 2011.

The governor of the Afghan jail where hundreds of insurgents this week escaped through a tunnel built by the Taliban has been detained along with several top aides, an intelligence source told Reuters today.

General Ghulam Dastgir, who headed the high-security Sarposa jail where almost 500 fighters escaped along a dirt shaft fitted with lights and air pipes, was led away in handcuffs following a preliminary investigation, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Also detained were eight others including Dastgir’s deputy governor and several senior prison managers, he said.

A spokesman for Tooryalai Wesa, the governor of southern Kandahar province where the jail was located, confirmed several detentions at the prison, but declined to name anyone.

“A number of people were detained because they neglected their duties,” the spokesman said.




Several police from stations located around the prison on the outskirts of Kandahar city had also been dismissed for sleeping when they should have been on patrol as the escape took place under cover of darkness, he said.

Afghanistan’s government has launched a full investigation into the breakout, the second in three years at the jail, which Karzai’s chief spokesman said had exposed serious holes in the country’s security preparedness.

In 2008, about 1,000 prisoners including Taliban fighters escaped after a truck bomb blew open the jail gates. That mass escape quickly led to a surge in fighting.

Obama weighs review process for Guantanamo detainees

Some of the remaining detainees under guard in Guantanamo prison.

The Obama administration is considering the creation of a review process for Guantanamo Bay detainees who are deemed too dangerous to be released but who cannot be tried in either civilian or military courts.

An administration official confirmed that an executive order had been drafted that would establish “periodic reviews” for prolonged detentions. But the official said the order had not yet gone to President Barack Obama.

The order may be greeted warily by human rights groups. While the administration sees the process as a way to provide clear standards for cases of indefinite detentions, many rights groups oppose any formalisation of such detentions.



The Washington Post, which first reported that the draft order was under consideration, said it would create a system that would allow detainees and their lawyers to challenge incarcerations, possibly every year.

It would also establish a more “adversarial” process for reviews than the system put in place by the administration of former President George W. Bush, the newspaper said.

There are still 174 detainees at the Guantanamo prison and about three dozen were set for prosecution in either US criminal courts or military commissions. Republicans have demanded that the trials be held at Guantanamo.

In a May 2009 speech in which he underscored his pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, Obama said there was a need for “prolonged detention” for some terrorism suspects who could not be tried but posed a threat to security.

US officials say trials are not possible in some cases because evidence was obtained through torture or is classified.

“We must have clear, defensible and lawful standards for those who fall in this category,” Obama said in the speech. “We must have fair procedures so that we don’t make mistakes. We must have a thorough process of periodic review, so that any prolonged detention is carefully evaluated and justified.”

Obama has vowed to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay amid international condemnation of the treatment of detainees, but he has run into political resistance at home.

The formalisation of the policy on prolonged detentions comes as the Obama administration struggles with how to prosecute other terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The administration has had to scramble to lobby against legislation pending in Congress — surprisingly put forward by some of Obama’s fellow Democrats — that would ban bringing suspects to US soil for prosecution in criminal courts.

Attorney General Eric Holder has pushed for criminal trials for many terrorism suspects and has urged lawmakers to not interfere with the administration’s powers to decide how to prosecute them.

Elisa Massimino, head of Human Rights First, said an executive order “limited to certain Guantanamo cases” was preferable to broader legislation on prevention detentions.

But she added that preventive detention policies, whether by the administration or Congress, “pose a serious threat to fundamental rights and are no substitute for criminal justice”.

“Reliance on indefinite detention as a path of least resistance is part of how we ended up in the Guantanamo mess in the first place,” Massimino added.

Myanmar opposition in disarray as polls approach

Boycotts, draconian election laws and resignations of opposition figures have put Myanmar’s ruling generals within easy grasp to sweep the first polls in two decades, just two weeks after setting an election date.

Myanmar’s politically marginalised opposition appears in total disarray in the run up to the much-criticised November 7 polls, experts say, playing into the hands of a military regime with no intention to give up its 48-year grip on power.

“Than Shwe’s (above) only political strategy is divide and rule and a weakened opposition is just what he needs





The leader of the National Democratic Force (NDF) party, Khin Muang Swe, said late on Thursday he would not run for a parliamentary seat, while influential Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday called on members of her now-defunct National League for Democracy (NLD) party to abstain from voting.

The moves, whether tactical or retaliatory, come as parties grapple with huge registration fees, strict campaign rules, intimidation by military agents and barely any time to recruit enough members to contest the election.

According to rules announced last week, campaign gatherings and publications will require official approval, criticism of the military is outlawed and election authorities are empowered to ban acts of “holding flags and chanting slogans”.

“This is just what the regime wants and has planned all along,” said Aung Naing Oo, a Burmese academic based in neighbouring Thailand.

“(Junta leader) Than Shwe’s only political strategy is divide and rule and a weakened opposition is just what he needs.”

Most analysts and opposition parties say the military has formed its own proxy party that is sure to win most seats in a parliament packed with army appointees, because of its big budget and sheer size and span of its representation.

The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) is comprised of incumbent army-picked ministers recently retired from the military and critics say it enjoys the backing of the powerful business elite.

Opposition at odds

Even if unpopular with mainstream Myanmar people, who voted overwhelmingly in favour of Suu Kyi’s NLD in the annulled 1990 poll, an overall USDP victory appears almost guaranteed against an under-funded opposition unable to campaign freely or come up with enough money to field candidates in all constituencies.

Moreover, analysts say, the opposition appears to be struggling to forge a common stance unlike the last polls.

The Union Democratic Party (UDP) last week said it would boycott the election if it believed it would not be free and fair. Its leader, Phyo Min Thein, seen as one of the biggest hopes for democracy, quit on Aug 15 and said fair polls were impossible.

Thu Wai, chairman of Democratic Party (Myanmar) and a former political prisoner, disagrees and says a boycott would play into the hands of the military junta and give it legitimacy.

Election laws were so tight, he added, the junta-backed USDP did not need to cheat to win.

“These parties are divided over what’s the lesser evil,” said Christopher Roberts, a Myanmar expert at the University of Canberra.

“Do they enter a less-than-perfect process that’s better than nothing or take a principled stance and boycott to push for a better model of democracy? Either way, it doesn’t look like the generals and their proxies will face much of a challenge.”

Carter in North Korea to free US prisoner

Former US President Jimmy Carter arrived in North Korea today to try to win the release of an American jailed for illegally entering the reclusive state, media reports said.

The visit comes amid heightened tensions on the peninsula after the torpedoing in March of a South Korean warship, which Seoul blames on the North and which prompted Washington to announce expanded sanctions against Pyongyang.

North Korea’s KCNA news agency said Carter and his group arrived in Pyongyang and was met at the airport by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan, who represents Pyongyang at six-way nuclear disarmament talks that had been on hold for two years.

Carter, 85, and his wife flew in a private jet and not a US military plane, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said earlier, quoting a US diplomatic source.

A US official said on Tuesday that Carter would travel to the North on a private humanitarian mission to secure the release of Aijalon Mahli Gomes, who has been sentenced by the North to eight years hard labour.

Gomes (picture), 30, tried to commit suicide out of despair, the North’s state media said last month.

Gomes, who KCNA said was from Boston, crossed into the North in January carrying a letter calling on leader Kim Jong-il to repent his sins and step down, a South Korean religious activist who had met him has said.

Gomes had been teaching English in Seoul for about two years before making the trip to North Korea. He was also active in Protestant churches, his colleagues said.

Former President Bill Clinton made a similar humanitarian trip last year, winning the release of two journalists also jailed for illegally entering the North.

Clinton’s trip was followed by dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington marking an end to a series of provocations by the North and briefly easing tensions in the region.

South Korean media have reported the North wants Washington to send an envoy to discuss improving ties, including the resumption of stalled six-party nuclear disarmament talks.

Both Washington and Seoul have said Pyongyang must first admit responsibility for the sinking of the warship before they will consider returning to the talks.

A day in the life at Guantanamo: The eerie images of leg irons and 'life lessons' at America's darkest prison r

Unhindered: The detainees also appear free to exercise and talk together relatively undisturbed in the yard

Handcuffs line the wall of a tool shed in the camp

Big Brother: As if the fence was not enough, dozens of security cameras are also placed along the fence - along with watchtowers manned by armed guards

Dinnertime: The detainees are allowed to serve themselves from carts wheeled in to the detention centre

Anger: An inmate appears to let his temper get the best of him as the teacher walks him through the 'life lesson', where prisoners are taught skills such as resume writing

Heart of darkness: A guard watches over inmates as they attend the 'life lessons' at Guantanamo Bay in these images taken on March 29, 2010

Detention: One inmate, his hands free but his legs shackled to the floor, reads during the class as guards in protective clothing shackled another inmate to the ground behind him

Neighbours: One detainee pops his head in at the door of another's cell - blissfully blocking out the image of the leg shackles that had him chained to the floor just hours earlier

Barbed wire: The fence surrounding the exercise yard does not allow the impression of freedom to last

Despair: A gloved guard reaches for a detainee as he leans his head on the metal table

Transport shackles: After the classes, the detainees are frisked and chained to be taken back to their cells

They are scenes of tediousness rather than of terror or torture.

But the shackles and barbed wire imply the threat behind the boredom, as these never-before-seen images of life inside the prison at Guantanamo Bay show.

The inane round of exercise, packaged meals and 'life lessons' is now everything to these, the few remaining detainees - who have never been charged with any crimes - at Guantanamo.
Today fewer than 200 detainees are in custody at the U.S. naval base in southeastern Cuba, compared with about 780 who have been jailed within its razor-wire fences at some point.

Some of those who remain have been cleared for release by Pentagon review panels, but have not been repatriated for fears they could be mistreated in their native countries.

Others are considered among the highest-value terrorism suspects, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the 9/11 attack.
In these images, the camp has an empty, leftover feel - as though the few who are left are simply waiting.

Despite the level of danger attached to them, they are allowed to associate freely in the exercise yard and pop their heads into each other's cells.

Their food is brought to them on a cart, carefully wrapped in plastic and with anything that could have been used as a weapon removed.

They attend 'life lessons', classes in which they are taught mundane skills such as writing a resume while chained to the cold metal floor by padded leg irons.

They are frisked as they are returned to their cells for another long night.
The pictures have all been approved by the U.S. military and seem surprisingly insipid - but the barbed wire, cameras, armed guards and shackles all belie the darker threat behind them.

Barack Obama has vowed to close Guantanamo Bay, an international blight on America's moral reputation.

The U.S. President called it a 'recruiting tool for terrorists' as critics demanded to know how Washington could reconcile torture and detention without trial with its message of peace and democracy.

But despite the obvious problems with leaving the camp open, Mr Obama has run into even bigger problems with trying to close it.
He has had trouble lining up help from other countries and even his own political party: Republicans and some Democrats have vehemently opposed moving terror suspects to U.S. soil, citing security fears.

The tribunal system for prosecuting terrorism suspects, which Mr Obama had put on hold for months, is expected to begin revving up this summer with modifications.

The next inmate scheduled for trial is Omar Khadr, a Canadian accused of killing an American solider with a grenade in Afghanistan when he was 15.

The Obama administration has said it wants to hold the detainees in an Illinois prison, but Congress first has to both approve the money to buy the prison and change current law barring detainees from entering the country for anything other than trial.

The president's self-imposed deadline to close Guantanamo passed in January. U.S. officials refuse to predict when the detention centre will get a new date for closure.

Meanwhile in Guantanamo, the chained prisoners exercise, talk, go to class - and wait.

Survivors, liberators gather for Auschwitz commemoration with Israel PM

Auschwitz survivors, Soviet veterans and leaders including Israeli Premier Benjamin
Netanyahu gathered on Wednesday for US President Barack Obama spoke of the "sacred duty to remember the cruelty" of Auschwitz and of "resisting anti-Semitism and ignorance in all its forms" in a video address aired at a forum organised by the European Jewish Congress (EJC) in Krakow, southern Poland, ahead of official afternoon ceremonies at the Auschwitz site.

"Auschwitz is the symbol of absolute evil that remains seared on the human conscience," French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in a message to Polish and European Jewish leaders at the Krakow forum and underscored France's commitment to preserve the memory of the Holocaust.


"Like people, historical memory can disappear," EJC leader Moshe Kantor warned in a speech to some 700 participants in the "Let My People Live" forum.

"Our appreciation to you is timeless," he said, thanking Soviet Red Army veterans who liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945.

Speaking after landing in Krakow on his way to the ceremonies, Netanyahu said, "The tragedy of the Jewish people had been that it was unable to identify danger in time and to defend itself.

"This situation has totally changed over the past 65 years. I am coming today as the prime minister of Israel. We are a nation that can defend itself and a nation capable of warming the rest of the world of danger,"

Netanyahu was to deliver a speech later Wednesday at the Auschwitz ceremony, due to start around 3 pm (1400 GMT), speaking after survivors and Poland's President Lech Kaczynski.

Tel Aviv's Polish-born Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, a Holocaust orphan who survived as a child in Nazi camps, was to recite the Kaddish, or Jewish prayer of mourning.

Poland invited Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to attend, but he declined citing "other obligations", according to Warsaw.

The former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp has become an enduring reminder of Nazi German genocide during World War II which claimed the lives of six million European Jews.

In 2005 the United Nations declared January 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

A total of 1.1 million people perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau -- one million of them Jews from across occupied Europe -- mostly killed in gas chambers but also from shooting, hanging, starvation, disease, slave labour and pseudo-medical experiments.

Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor and Tel Aviv resident Baruch Shub, 85, said he still bore the emotional scars of his suffering.

"There's a lot of sorrow, because when I came home, I found nobody in my family alive. But also a bit of happiness because the war was over and I'd somehow stayed alive," Shub told AFP.

The Nazis initially set up Auschwitz to hold Polish political prisoners in 1940, a year after invading Poland. They chose a former barracks in the southern town of Oswiecim, Germanised as Auschwitz.

It became a site primarily for exterminating Jews -- viewed by the Nazis as sub-human -- from 1942 as it expanded to Birkenau, three kilometres (two miles) away.

In addition to Jews, and 70-75,000 non-Jewish Poles, the Nazis killed 21,000 Roma there, 15,000 Soviet POWs and 10-15,000 others, including resistance members arrested across Europe, according to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

There were only around 7,000 survivors in the camp at the liberation. The Nazis had evacuated some 60,000 others only days earlier in the notorious "Death March" as they fled the Soviet advance.

With their numbers dwindling year by year, about 100 survivors were set to attend Wednesday's ceremony in sub-zero temperatures similar to the weather 65 years ago.

Only a handful of the liberators are still alive. Two, Ivan Martynushkin, 86, and Yakov Vinnochenko, 83, were scheduled to attend.

In Krakow, Martynushkin told AFP he was marked by that fateful day.

"We started meeting huddles of people. They came towards us, in prison stripes. Some had covers over their heads. We could only see their eyes. And in those eyes, we could see what they were feeling," he said.

"But we didn't know what it was. We only understood after the war," he added.




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Australians to learn of their convict ancestry as details of people sent down under 200 years ago are released

Criminal acts: A drawing of soldiers inspecting convicts arriving in Sydney in the 18th Century

An Irish family re-enacting the experiences of early convict settlers in New South Wales in the TV series 'The Colony'. Many Australians will be able to trace the details of their ancestry on Tuesday

The dark details of their family histories are to be revealed to thousands of Australians this week following the release of details of the convicts Britain sent to the new colony more than 200 years ago.

The British government has released the details to coincide with Australia Day on Tuesday, allowing individuals to search through an online data base to check if they are descended from criminals.

If they do find they have convict ancestors, most Australians are unlikely to be perturbed - surveys have revealed that many regard having a convict as an early family member as an interesting talking point at dinner parties.
Many of the convicts sent to Australia in the 1700s and 1800s were transported for minor crimes such as stealing bread or riding off with someone's horse.

Included among the records being released through the British website Ancestry.co.uk, which will be free to be logged on to until January 30 - taking in Australia Day - are the Convict Registers of Conditional and Absolute Pardons from 1791 to 1846.
It details more than 21,000 convicts who were set free in New South Wales and who ended up with plots of land given to them by the government or who made names for themselves in setting up businesses.

Also detailed are 34,000 New South Wales Certificates of Freedom which were handed out in the mid-1800s to convicts who had served prison terms of between seven and 14 years.

Mr Dan Jones, international content director of the data base, says about one in three Britons are believed to have a convict ancestor - and that would include present day Australians whose ancestry dates back to the years following Captain Cook's voyages of discovery to the lands on the other side of the world.

'While Australia's convict history itself has been well documented, there are thousands of individual stories in the collection just waiting to be told,' said Mr Jones.

Australians are now hoping that when they begin searches, they will be able to find someone in their early family who has had such an interesting life that it is worth repeating to everyone prepared to listen.

Among those transported from British and Irish shores were John Kelly, an Irish convict who was the father of a very famous son - bushranger Ned Kelly.
There was also William Chopin, a convict who became a chemist at a hospital in New South Wales - but who was later sent back to jail after being convicted of being an abortionist.

One of the most feared convicts, who escaped custody, was Alexander Pearce who became a cannibal, eating one of his fellow escapers.

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