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So, when on November 30, 2021, a court in Frankfurt, Germany, handed down a life  to an Iraqi man who joined the Islamic State (IS) group for genocide against the Yazidi minority — the first time a former member of IS had been convicted of genocide and the first verdict for genocide against Yazidis — it was celebrated as a landmark case in the fight for justice and accountability. Taha al-Jumailly was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity resulting in death, war crimes, aiding and abetting war crimes, and bodily harm resulting in death.

“T´Ç»ĺ˛ą˛â, ISIS member Taha AJ was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life in prison. This is the first genocide verdict against an ISIS member. This verdict is a win for survivors of genocide, survivors of sexual violence, & the Yazidi community,”  Nadia Murad, a 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner and a Yazidi survivor of IS enslavement.

Universal Jurisdiction

The trial was also the first in Germany based on the principle of universal jurisdiction addressing crimes under international law committed abroad by a perpetrator who is not a German citizen and was only extradited on the basis of an international arrest warrant. Universal jurisdiction is the principle that some crimes are so serious that states should be allowed to claim jurisdiction over an accused person regardless of where they were committed or any other relation with the prosecuting entity. None of the crimes in the Jumailly case were committed in Germany, and neither the victims nor the suspect were German nationals.

Though universal jurisdiction has been practiced in just a few countries in recent years, it has become an increasingly important tool for achieving accountability and justice for the survivors and victims of international crimes. Hundreds of investigations are ongoing and dozens of convictions have been obtained.

The blossoming of universal jurisdiction is attributable to several factors, one of which is that the alternative route to prosecuting international crimes through the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has effectively been closed by geopolitics. The Syrian conflict, for example, has never been appraised by the ICC because Russia backs President Bashar al-Assad.

The Pursuit of Cases

In recent years, there has been a greater capacity and willingness on the part of some domestic authorities to pursue cases involving international crimes, at least in certain circumstances. More and more countries have also passed laws allowing them to conduct the kind of landmark prosecution that took place in Frankfurt. More countries are following the Dutch  in setting up specialized units within the police, prosecution and even immigration services dedicated to identifying perpetrators of international crimes and bringing them to trial.

Another important factor in the power of universal jurisdiction is that victims and their advocates can contribute to investigations and prosecutions, and sometimes even influence the direction they take. In some countries, such as France and Belgium, victims and NGOs can initiate criminal proceedings. Even where this is not possible, victims and their advocates can still drive cases forward in other ways, such as by tracking perpetrators’ movements, sharing information with the authorities and exerting pressure on them to act.

Dutch authorities have even issued  for Syrians in the Netherlands on how to file a criminal complaint against other Syrians relating to violations in Syria. In February, after Germany’s top court  that war crimes committed abroad can be tried in the country, a court in Koblenz became the first court outside of Syria to rule on state-sponsored torture by the Assad regime when it sentenced a former member of the secret police to four and a half years in prison for being an accomplice to crimes against humanity. Another former Syrian intelligence officer is currently on  in Germany for  58 counts of murder and at least 4,000 cases of torture, rape or sexual abuse.

Many Challenges

Despite this recent progress, enormous legal, evidentiary and logistical challenges remain before international criminal cases can be brought to trial. Investigating and prosecuting international crimes in domestic courts is not straightforward, especially in a complex conflict such as the Yemen war where crimes have been committed over many years by different actors.

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Foreign investigators cannot easily gather evidence on the ground, so they have to rely on the cooperation of different parties to the conflict to build cases. UN bodies like the group of eminent experts, international organizations, local NGOs, and organizations such as Airwars assist with investigations.

Even if evidence linking an individual perpetrator to war crimes can be established, the suspect still has to be apprehended. In some countries practicing universal jurisdiction, those accused of committing war crimes do not need to be within reach of authorities for an investigation to be opened, but they need to be physically brought to court before any trial can take place.

Though international cooperation can be used to apprehend and extradite international pariahs like IS militants, pirates and slave traders, war criminals who are still serving members of Arab regimes are not about to be handed over. Only when they set foot in a country practicing universal jurisdiction — whether for work, vacation, claiming asylum or for any other reason — can they be arrested immediately, providing they do not benefit from immunity.

Jumailly’s conviction “sends a clear message,” Natia Navrouzov, a lawyer and member of the NGO Yazda, which gathers evidence of crimes committed by IS against the Yazidis. “It doesn’t matter where the crimes were committed and it doesn’t matter where the perpetrators are, thanks to the universal jurisdiction, they can’t hide and will still be put on trial.”

*[This article was originally published by , a partner of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post How the Legal Landscape Is Changing for War Crimes appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

On September 28, the  was published, the first report of its kind designed to assess levels of organized crime and resilience to organized criminal activity in 193 UN member states. (There is no data for the Occupied Palestinian Territories or Western Sahara.)

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The index, a collaborative effort by over 350 experts worldwide funded by the US State Department and the European Union, provides the most comprehensive assessment to date of the pervasiveness of criminal markets, the influence of criminal actors and the effectiveness of resilience measures to combat the threat of organized crime. It is based on data from 2020, to be updated every two years in order to provide a global baseline for criminality and resilience over time.

Deeply Embedded

Overall, the index highlights the entrenched nature of organized crime, with more than three-quarters of the world’s population assessed as living in countries with high levels of crime and low levels of resistance to organized crime. State involvement in organized crime is shown to be a deeply embedded phenomenon globally, with state officials and their clients now the most dominant brokers of organized crime, not cartel leaders or mafia bosses.

While Western democracies come out on top, Arab countries generally score poorly, with Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Iraq coming bottom or near the bottom in several categories. Overall, the most criminal Arab country is found to be Iraq (ranked 8^th globally), followed by Syria (14), Lebanon (15), Libya (20) and Sudan (24).

The index evaluates every country according to two metrics: criminality, which is based on criminal markets and five different types of criminal actors, and resilience to organized crime, based on 12 factors such as good governance, law enforcement and witness support.

The most pervasive crime in the region is found to be human trafficking, which includes modern slavery and organ trafficking, as well as human smuggling — the illegal entry, transit or residence of migrants (by land, sea or air) by an organized criminal group for the purposes of a financial or material benefit.

Three Arab countries —&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;, Yemen and the  â€” are ranked among the five worst countries in the world for human trafficking. Syria and  are both rated as the third-worst countries globally for human smuggling. According to the index, in Libya “Smuggling is generally associated with high levels of violence and high death rates. The state has little control over the entire territory and many state officials reportedly benefit from the profits of migrant smuggling.”

Regarding the UAE, the index notes that “In combination with the continuation of the sponsorship (Kafala) system and a failure of the government of the UAE to meet the minimum standards for combating trafficking and smuggling, the demand for cheap labour enables both human smuggling and trafficking on a relatively large scale.”

Narco-States

After trafficking and smuggling humans, other crimes the index considers are the narcotics trade, arms trafficking, and wildlife and resource crimes. Libya is ranked as the worst country in the world for arms trafficking, followed by ,  and . In Libya, “Most arms dealers are relatively small and play a mediator role between different actors.

Other enabling structures, such as offshore banking, offshore companies and jurisdictions with low levels of enforcement and high levels of corruption, play a much more significant role in facilitating arms transfers,” the index states.

“Yemen has widespread gun ownership and one of the largest arms-trafficking markets in the world, with weapons redirected from military stores or acquired from foreign actors. Ongoing conflict has resulted in an increase of light and medium weapons such as Turkish pistols and silencers, but tanks, ammunition, grenades, machine guns and light armoured vehicles are also sold in open-air arms markets.”

Iraq is ranked fifth-worst country globally for non-renewable resource crimes, meaning the illicit extraction, smuggling, mingling, bunkering or mining of natural resources.  and  are ranked as the worst countries in the world (along with Paraguay and Jamaica) for the illicit cultivation, distribution and sale of cannabis. 

 is the next-worst cannabis offender globally: “In 2015, cannabis cultivation in Sudan generated over 7 billion USD in profits and in 2019, Sudan reported the seizure of over 16 000 cannabis crops.”

Syria is now a full-blown ranked number one globally for the production, distribution and sale of synthetic drugs: “Syria’s cannabis and synthetic-drug trades are flourishing. … Synthetic drugs are also smuggled out of Syria to neighbouring countries and elsewhere in the Middle East, as well as to Europe. Easy access to ingredients enables synthetic-drug production to flourish, and Captagon production in particular has been increasing in recent years.”

In terms of resistance to organized crime, Jordan is ranked as the most resilient Arab country (39^th globally), followed by Qatar (51), Kuwait (=55), Bahrain (=55) and the UAE (68). The countries ranked as having the least resistance to organized crime in the world are Libya, followed by , South Sudan and Syria.

“There is little to no political leadership and governance in Libya on organised-crime issues. … The approach of different governing entities in Libya is consistently characterized by a co-option approach. The state has been involved in a co-option strategy for activities such as human smuggling and fuel. … Libya has one of the highest corruption perception levels in the world.”

On Somalia, the index observes: “Most NGOs and all UN agencies are banned from territories that are controlled by al-Shabaab. On the domestic level, while Somalia has several laws related to organized crime, it is the worst-performing country in the world when it comes to rule of law. Somalia’s penal code has not been updated since 1964. Currently, there is no legislation that explicitly criminalizes sex trafficking and forced labour.”

Shortcomings

The Global Organized Crime Index is compiled by in-house researchers as well as external journalists, academics and members of civil society. It is innovative in how it assesses the vulnerabilities and resilience to organized crime in a quantitatively based and expert-led way.

But it has its shortcomings, notably in the kind of terminology used that does not reflect the reality of organized crime in today’s Middle East and North Africa. None of the index’s four types of criminal actors — mafia-style groups, criminal networks, state-embedded actors and foreign actors — accurately describe groups like al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, Gulf royal families, the Houthis or Hezbollah that are among the biggest perpetrators of organized crime in the region.

While the report considers a range of international crimes, it does not include international  and  — such as those undertaken by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s personal group —&˛Ô˛ú˛ő±č;even though Saudi dissidents in the UK are still forced to live under the  of British counterterrorism police.

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Nor does the index include the crime of  international and Western institutions, which Arab monarchies are known to be experts at. The case of King Juan Carlos who  in the UAE in 2020 after Spain’s supreme court launched an investigation into his alleged involvement in a high-speed rail contract in Saudi Arabia is just one high-profile example.

The report also fails to consider the spreading of , the  of UK citizens, the infiltration and  of the  or  — all activities Arab regimes busily pursue.

The index should highlight the key role Arab  play in perpetrating organized crime around the world, with Arab diplomats often linked to serious organized crime. This includes gold  by UAE diplomats in India, Saudi  against UN officials, as well as Saudi diplomats arranging flights for Saudi  who have committed very serious offenses in the West, including murder, to evade justice and abscond back to Saudi Arabia, undermining the Western judicial process.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Middle East and North Africa Top Organized Crime Report appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

Ties over the following decades remained close. This was not so much because of Saudi geopolitical interests in Afghanistan, but rather how the country affected Saudi Arabia’s relations with Iran and Pakistan, a major rival and an important ally of the kingdom respectively.

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The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan from 1979 marked the summit of Saudi influence. In coordination with Pakistan and the United States, the Saudis famously supported the mujahideen and also assisted many Afghan refugees. Throughout the 1980s, the kingdom exercised direct interference over various Islamist groups in Afghanistan and many Saudis traveled there to fight the Soviets.

After the Soviet Union departed in 1989 and throughout the subsequent civil war in Afghanistan, the Saudis continued their role of manipulating Afghan politicians and factions, using their petrodollars and religious influence on behalf of the US, with mixed results. In 1993, all of the Afghan mujahideen factions signed a peace in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, but that failed to stop the conflict.

Saudi Ties With the Taliban

Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, some commentators have encouraged the Saudis to try to play the religious card again. In June, Muslim scholars from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia  a “declaration of peace” in Mecca, which Arab News as a “historic, landmark event on the path toward reconciliation between warring factions.” But the Taliban  the move — which, in any event, had no impact on peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government — as a theatrical attempt to steal the diplomatic limelight from Qatar using Islamic mercenaries.

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Saudi influence over the Taliban began with funding hardline religious schools, or madrassas, in Pakistan where the movement started. It effectively ended in 1996 when the Taliban first took over Afghanistan. At the end of the 1990s, Saudi citizens were officially barred from giving money to any charity that was not state-approved, which meant Saudi public funding for the Taliban was largely cut off, except for a few  acting without the explicit knowledge of the government. A 2013 research  by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs stated that Saudi “fundraisers for the Taliban … are believed to extensively exploit networks and use old mechanisms dating back to the times of Saudi cooperation with mujahedeen and Taliban functionaries.”

When the Taliban last ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, Saudi Arabia was one of only three countries to officially recognize their government; Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates were the other two. This was not because the Saudis supported the Taliban regime, but rather because they were looking for a way to grease the wheels for an approach by Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence, to persuade the Taliban to extradite Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda.

The Saudis calculated that by recognizing the Taliban government, they could win influence as they had done in the past with other factions and warlords. But in 1998, when Prince Turki  to Afghanistan with a delegation of Muslim figures, the former Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, turned him down.

The Saudi View of the Taliban

The House of Saud now faces a disconcerting moment over Afghanistan, not least because like the former Afghan government, the royal family depends on the US for protection against external enemies and internal threats.

In a report by about the implications of the Taliban takeover on Saudi Arabia, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, comments: “Questions are likely to be mounting in Riyadh about the sincerity and the reliability of US security guarantees which themselves have been a matter of considerable uncertainty since the September 2019 attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure.” He adds that the “sudden abandonment of Afghan partners, spelled out clinically and coldly in [Joe] Biden’s televised address, may resonate strongly among US regional partners for whom President [Barack] Obama’s perceived abandonment of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 set in motion a questioning of US motivations that then continued into the Trump era.”

Neil Quilliam, a Middle East analyst at Chatham House, continues in the same Wikistrat report: “The Taliban leadership will likely begin a campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the Al Saud and appeal directly to the Saudi population to challenge the ruling family’s authority.” He adds that the “nature of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is a cause for concern in Saudi Arabia. President Biden’s speech about the withdrawal, wherein he noted that remaining in Afghanistan no longer constitutes a vital interest, has also sent shockwaves through the Saudi ±ô±đ˛ą»ĺ±đ°ů˛őłóľ±±č.”

The Taliban may turn on Saudi Arabia in the media war. Transnational jihadist groups like al-Qaeda could also threaten the Saudis from Afghanistan again. But as Sami Hamdi explained in the Arab Digest podcast, there are reasons why Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman might benefit from the situation in Afghanistan in terms of finding a renewed utility toward the US. A foreign diplomat in Riyadh, quoted by , predicted that the kingdom will take a pragmatic approach. “The Saudis have a historical relationship with Afghanistan and will eventually have to accept the Taliban [again] … They have no other option,” he said.

In 2019, Jalaluddin Shinwari, the former Taliban deputy minister of justice, the New York Times: “What [we] are saying to Americans is this: You have accepted Saudi Arabia, and we won’t do more than their basic code — retribution for murder, chop off the hand for robbing. If you have accepted Saudi, what’s wrong with us being another? The rest will be your priorities: aid, friendship, economic relations.”

The US Would Never Pull Out of Saudi Arabia

The Taliban can dream of a relationship with the US akin to that which the Saudis enjoy. Yet that relationship is completely different from whatever ties the US has with Afghanistan. The United States would never pull out of Saudi Arabia the way it did from Afghanistan, not only because of hydrocarbons — although with the Middle East still providing around 31% of world oil  and 16% of global natural gas supply, this remains an important factor. Nor is American support just about Israel’s security — although the US and its Western allies certainly wish to ensure this, and they are ready to work with any Arab regime, particularly Saudi Arabia, that is ready to officially recognize Israel on US terms.

The main reason the US can never pull out of Saudi Arabia is because of the unthinkable consequences of losing Saudi control of the two holy mosques in Mecca and Medina to al-Qaeda or another jihadist movement. That is why US support for the Saudis remains solid despite misgivings on both sides.

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Aftershocks of the Saudi and American Debacle in Afghanistan appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.

This is a story that has long been in the public domain: In 2020, the Financial Action Task Force published a  that stated: “The UAE’s understanding of the risks it faces from money laundering, terrorist financing and funding of weapons of mass destruction is still emerging … The risks are significant, and result from the UAE’s extensive financial, economic, corporate and trade activities, including as a global leader in oil, diamond and gold ±đłć±č´Ç°ůłŮ˛ő.”

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In 2018, a UN  stated, “In every state [in the Economic Community of West African States region], it was reported that most of the gold exported from the region is destined for Dubai. Most of this gold is thought to be exported by plane; gold is thought to be smuggled, for the most part, out of the region through airports.”

The UAE authorities have been facing increasingly strenuous calls to clean up their bullion trade. In 2019, an International Crisis Group report  on them to ensure income from the gold trade is not used to finance terrorism. In December 2020, the UK Home Office national risk  stated: “These deficiencies expose the UAE, and other countries, to abuse by international controller networks which continue to launder the proceeds of crime to and from countries including the UK. These criminal networks exploit features of the UAE’s laws and systems, in order to move cash and gold easily into and out of the country, as well as engage in money laundering through the UAE property market, international trade, and newer areas such as crypto assets.”

Last year, the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), the world’s most influential gold market authority,  to stop UAE bullion from entering the mainstream market if it failed to meet regulatory standards. Since gold was the UAE’s  export after oil in 2019, a trend that in a post-oil age looks only set to grow, the authorities responded by quickly pledging  for an LBMA initiative in December 2020 to crack down on illegal gold trading and improve regulation around issues like money laundering and unethical sourcing.

Gold Discovered in India

But recent developments in a court case in India are once again calling into question the UAE’s commitment to clean up its bullion trade. In June 2020, Indian customs over 30 kilograms of gold worth — at the official market rate — more than $2.1 million. The gold was found in diplomatic baggage addressed to the UAE Consulate-General Office in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of the southern Indian state of Kerala; it had been  as bathroom fittings, noodles, biscuits and dates. The subsequent investigation has opened a Pandora’s Box of organized crime that has already led to around 30 , including a host of alleged facilitators, financiers, gold traders, former employees of the UAE Consulate and a principal secretary to the Kerala chief minister.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is India’s counterterrorism task force, and at least four other central government agencies are now conducting separate but related investigations into a US  smuggling operation from Thiruvananthapuram airport to Cairo via Muscat. The operation was allegedly run by the former UAE Consulate Finance Department head, Khaled Ali Shoukry, an Egyptian national. The other investigations involve corrupt schemes related to various local government projects in Kerala, including the Wadakanchery LIFE Mission housing project, which is funded by the UAE Red Crescent, and the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board.

This is the first time UAE diplomats have ever been publicly implicated in gold smuggling. Emirati authorities have promised to cooperate, claiming they were duped by their Indian and Egyptian staff. But the former UAE consul general, Jamal Hussain al-Zaab, and Admin Attaché Rashed Khamis Ali Musaiqri both fled home last year before they could be questioned and are now claiming diplomatic immunity.

However, a steady stream of information has been coming to light through disclosures in Kerala High Court. The NIA  150 kilograms of gold was smuggled through Thiruvananthapuram airport in the last six months in a similar fashion, and most of the money was used for funding terrorism. According to  quoted in Indian media, over 20 such consignments allegedly came to India from Dubai since September 2019, around 19 of which were addressed to the UAE consul general and one was in the name of the admin attachĂ©. At the same time, senior Indian politicians linked to the case were enjoying five-star  to the UAE.

The Claims

In March, the political temperature rose significantly when two of the key accused, Indian nationals employed in the consular office,  that the UAE consul general was personally involved in the criminal enterprise. Swapna Suresh, formerly the consul general’s Arabic-language translator, and another employee, Sarith P.S.,  in an affidavit that the consul general, as well as several senior Indian politicians, were  of the gold and dollar smuggling activities and were coordinating illegal financial dealings under the cover of various projects run by the state government.

“Swapna and Sarith [the accused] stated that it was a common practice among foreign nationals, including diplomats working at UAE Consulate, to carry currency notes above permitted limits. We suspect that they were engaged in hawala activities to fund smuggling of gold from Dubai to Kerala. Similarly, they also smuggled goods from abroad using diplomatic privileges and sold them in the Kerala market. Many Indian employees of the consulate were aware of such activities and they will be questioned soon” an Indian customs official reportedly .

The UAE consul general, Swapna , split a 3-million UAE dirham ($817,000) commission for the Wadakkanchery project three ways between himself, Shoukry and her. Another accused claimed the consul general and Shoukry were carrying out illegal gold smuggling activities while working in the UAE Mission in  before coming to Thiruvananthapuram.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs recently issued permission to arraign the former consul general and admin attachĂ© who served at the UAE Consulate in Thiruvananthapuram. “Both of them assisted Swapna Suresh and Sarith PS to clear the baggage containing gold that arrived from the UAE. They also were receiving remuneration as per the quantity of gold smuggling on 21 occasions. They are equally involved as other accused persons,” an Indian customs official reportedly .

*[This article was originally published by , a partner organization of 51łÔąĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔąĎ’s editorial policy.

The post UAE Diplomats Accused in International Gold Smuggling Syndicate appeared first on 51łÔąĎ.