Archive for June 3rd, 2016
La Hague tribunal for Lebanon continues trial of dead Hezbollah commander: Mustafa Badreddine
Posted on: June 3, 2016
Nicholas Noe shared this link in The Guardian ·
“…But in a move described as “Kafkaesque” by a source close to the proceedings, on Wednesday an international tribunal in The Hague prosecuting Badreddine for alleged terrorism offences decided to continue his trial, citing insufficient evidence that he was dead.
Both defence and prosecution teams told the court they believed the evidence proved that Badreddine is dead.
But in a two-to-one decision, the trial chamber of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon said the deceased Hezollah commander would continue to stand trial.
(Otherwise, there would be no need to resume this masquerade that lasted over a decade for nought)
“The trial chamber does not believe that sufficient evidence has yet been presented to convince it that the death of Mustafa Amine Badreddine has been proved to the requisite standard,” the Special Tribunal for Lebanon’s judges said.
“The trial will therefore continue pending the receipt of further information we anticipate from the government of Lebanon.”….”
Mustafa Badreddine, a senior Hezbollah commander, was killed last month in a mysterious explosion in Damascus. In a public acknowledgment of his role in the party’s numerous exploits, Hezbollah held a massive funeral attended by thousands of the party’s officials and supporters, including Badreddine’s brother.
His casket was carried after receiving full military honours and a marching band performance to his final resting place in the party’s cemetery in the southern suburbs of Beirut, next to his comrade-in-arms and brother-in-law Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in 2008 in a car bomb prepared jointly by the CIA and Mossad.
Prosecutors allege that Badreddine was the apex of a cell that organised and carried out the massive bombing in downtown Beirut in 2005 that killed Lebanon’s popular billionaire former prime minister, Rafik Hariri. The civil uprising that followed the truck-bomb attack led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.
Badreddine was being tried in absentia because Hezbollah had refused to hand over its commander to an international tribunal in The Hague. The party denies all allegations that its members played a role in Hariri’s killing, and claims the tribunal is a joint American-Israeli conspiracy.
“It’s unbelievable,” a source close to the proceedings told the Guardian. “This is Kafkaesque. Two full days of court time and hundreds of lawyers.”
The tribunal will likely continue prosecuting the assassinated Hezbollah operative until it receives a death certificate from the Lebanese authorities – a tricky proposition since the commander did not leave much of a paper trail throughout his life.
Badreddine is not the first high-profile defendant to die before his day in an international court.
Slobodan Milošević, the former president of Serbia, died in the midst of his trial in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Balkans.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Micheline Braidy of the trial chamber outlined why she believed it was obvious the shadowy commander had been slain.
“I’m convinced that Mr Mustafa Amine Badreddine is deceased,” Judge Braidy said. “Those events which have persuaded me include the following, mainly
1. media reports of Mr Badreddine’s death, nationally and internationally;
2. the video of the condolences ceremony on 13th of May 2016;
3. funeral speeches delivered on the 13th of May 2016;
4. the video of the casket entering the martyr cemetery of Rawdat-El-Shahidayn in Ghobeiry;
5. the photo of the grave;
6. the statement of Hezbollah regarding the cause of Mr Badreddine’s death;
7. the visit of the Iranian delegation on the 14th May 2016, namely, the deputy foreign minister of Iran;
8. the ceremony in Syria, attended by officials, Syrian, Palestinian, and Iranians;
9. the ceremony held in Beirut on the 20th of May with the attendance of the family of Mr Badreddine;
10. the ceremony held in Tehran, attended by the Badreddine relatives;
11. the family declaration of the death of Mr Badreddine.”
Note: Most Lebanese are convinced that the decision to assassinate of Rafic Hariri was decided by the US and France, planned and executed by Germany and Israel with sophisticated surveillance planes and special guided bomb.
Harambe the gorilla’s death? The reality of his life
Surely we can begin to agree that animals which share 98 per cent of our DNA should not be kept as entertainment for us to gawk at in a zoo
Captivity has taken an animal’s life. The latest victim: a 17-year-old gorilla named Harambe, who was gunned down after a young boy managed to crawl through a fence before falling into his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The incident (which could have been prevented by surrounding the enclosure with a secondary barrier) has generated a great deal of debate online, some extreme – one tweet said, “[I]f you have to shoot – aim for the least endangered one,” while an Express columnist took the view that “zoo staff did what you might think all people would want: they put the human life first”.
But arguing over whose life is more valuable misses the point. What we should be asking is why intelligent, self-aware animals are still being displayed as living exhibits for humans to gawk at.
Andrew Bossone shared this link
“Zoos try to justify their existence in the name of “conservation”, but warehousing animals in these facilities does nothing to help protect endangered animals in the wild.
In fact, some say doing so actually harms wild populations because it diverts much-needed funds away from the protection of animals in their natural habitats.”
Zoos try to justify their existence in the name of “conservation”, but warehousing animals in these facilities does nothing to help protect endangered animals in the wild. In fact, some say doing so actually harms wild populations because it diverts much-needed funds away from the protection of animals in their natural habitats.
After all, capturing (yes, some zoos still snatch animals out of their natural habitats), transporting and maintaining non-human animals for the professed purpose of “conserving” them is enormously expensive. It costs about 50 times as much to keep one African elephant in a zoo as it would to safeguard sufficient natural habitat to sustain that elephant and countless others.
When, in 2007, the Zoological Society of London spent £5.3m on a new gorilla enclosure, Ian Redmond, the chief consultant to the UN Great Apes Survival Partnership, said: “£5m for three gorillas [seems a huge amount] when national parks are seeing [three gorillas] killed every day for want of some Land Rovers, trained men and anti-poaching patrols. It must be very frustrating for the warden of a national park to see”.
Clearly, the same amount of money a zoo spends on buying expensive animals could benefit so many more of the same animals living in the wild. Our need for entertainment is expensive, unnecessary and without discernible benefit, then, to the animals involved.
While zoos spend millions on keeping animals in captivity, wild animals continue to experience habitat destruction and poaching.
Virtually none of the captive-bred species that do face extinction in the wild – including gorillas, elephants, polar bears, gorillas, tigers, chimpanzees and pandas – will ever be released back into their natural environments to bolster dwindling populations. The truth is that most zoos have no contact of any kind with reintroduction programmes.
Perhaps the only thing more tragic than Harambe’s death was his life.
While the debate about whether Cincinnati Zoo should have killed him or not rages on, surely we can all agree that animals deserve better than a life sentence in a zoo
Adonis Diaries 