International Criminal Court to look at Assad and his Syrian cronies

Secretary Clinton met with British Foreign Sec...Image via Wikipedia
Telegraph:

An influential body of international judges and lawyers called for Mr Assad and his lieutenants to be held to account for Easter weekend attacks in which troops and militamen fire on civilians.

"Those ordering and carrying out these attacks, including those firing live rounds into crowds, must be held criminally accountable," the International Committee of Jurists (ICJ) said in a statement.

As opposition supporters continued to bury dead comrades on Sunday, four more were reported to have been killed.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, warned all Britons in Syria that the scale of violence was so grave they should leave immediately or risk not being able to leave "at all" as the turmoil worsened.

Western governments were coming under growing scrutiny for their divergent policies towards Libya and Syria, where more than 300 people have been shot dead since unrest began five weeks ago.

...
The chances of lawfare working to stop a despot like Assad are remote. Assad is a little smarter than Qaddafi in that he has not used air power and he has not openly made threats to wipe out cities. He has followed the Iranian approach trying to reinstate a fear of the government through random killings.

So far this has not worked and it has given the demonstrators another opportunity to take to the streets and denounce the Syrian government. The killings are deliberate so there is a case to be made for murder charges, but it is clear they will not be made by the current government in Syria.
Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more