Malaysia's Mahathir plans war crimes tribunal

[masguy]

(Kyodo) _ Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said Wednesday he is forming a tribunal to try war crimes committed by heads of government.
The tribunal will be launched next week in conjunction with a peace conference that Mahathir's Perdana Global Peace Organization is hosting.

"The crimes that have been committed in Iraq, Palestine, Japan have not been given a hearing. It is time we set up a body which will give these people an opportunity to complain," Mahathir said at a press conference.

The crimes in Japan he was referring to were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in World War II.

The tribunal will carry no legal weight.

"We can't arrest them, we can't hang them the way they hanged Saddam Hussein," Mahathir said, adding that the aim is for history to condemn the
"I felt that one punishment that most leaders are afraid of is to go down in history with a certain label attached to them. So these people will always be called war criminals," he said.

So far 17 people -- nine from Iraq, five from the Palestinian territories and three from Lebanon -- have come forward with complaints of torture and abuses by the U.S. and Israeli armies.

A commission with Mahathir as chair and five other lawyers as members will investigate the veracity of their complaints before deciding whether they merit a hearing by the war crime tribunal that is largely made up of retired judges and legal experts.

"If the complaint is against a head of government, someone powerful, we will hold a trial in absentia," Mahathir said, adding that the accused will be invited to rebut charges leveled against them.

Mahathir who ruled Malaysia for 22 years before retiring in 2003, has been a staunch critic of the Iraq war and Israeli incursions into the Palestinian territories.

He has called U.S. President George W. Bush a "war criminal" and maintained he should be tried for war crimes.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070131/kyodo/d8n08gog0.html

[masguy]

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - Bosnian groups have nominated Malaysia's former premier Mahathir Mohamad for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for helping the country after its bloody civil war, according The Star newspaper.

It said that he was nominated by four civil groups in Bosnia spearheaded by former president Ejup Ganic.

Mahathir was described in their nomination paper as the developing world痴 "most courageous advocate," the Star said.

Under Mahathir, Malaysia provided economic, political and humanitarian aid for Bosnia while it reeled from the trauma of conflict and ethnic cleansing in the 1992-95 civil war.

The deadline for nominations to the Nobel Institute in Oslo closed February 1. The winner will be announced in October and it will be awarded on December 10.

Thousands of people are eligible to make nominations. They include members of parliament and government, university professors and previous laureates as well as several international institutes.

Last year, Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were selected from a list of 191 nominees.

Ganic said Mahathir had influenced the world with his lessons on managing diversity, solving conflicts and harnessing a multiethnic population to build a vibrant economy.

Mahathir, 81, who stepped down in 2003, has seized on the issue of conflict in the Middle East during his retirement.

He launched an unofficial war crimes tribunal last week to focus on victims of abuse in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070204/afp/070204055256people.html

:):) :)

[masguy]

A tribunal to try UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush for war crimes will be convened on Wednesday.

The anti-war demo was convened in Kuala Lumpur
It is no surprise that neither man will be attending the proceedings - they may not even be aware that it is taking place.

But start it will, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur called as part of the former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's campaign to criminalise war.

Dr Mahathir is not expected to sit on the tribunal. He couldn't quite be characterised as impartial.

Dr Mahathir said: "What is Blair if not the co-murderer of 500,000 Iraqi children and the liar who told the British that Saddam had WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) which could be launched against Britain within 45 minutes?

"History should remember Blair and Bush as the 'killers of children'."

Although the aim of the conference - entitled Expose War Crimes, Criminalise War - is to outlaw war itself, for many Malaysians who've turned up that means one thing.

"They're giving an open mind to people who know what kind of war crime that the US do to our communities in the world," was one man's assessment. It seemed to be that of most people.

"It is the converted preaching to the converted," said Gwynne Dyer, a journalist and Oscar-nominated documentary maker who addressed the conference.

"But I think this [conference] has potential," he said. "It actually has a goal beyond cheering people up and allowing them to vent."

And there's a lot of venting going on here. Specifically it seems to be to vilify Tony Blair and George Bush.

'Vast conspiracy'

The meeting has attracted a curious range of speakers.

The former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq Hans Von Sponeck shares a platform with author Alfred Lambremont Webre.

Mr Webre claims to have uncovered a vast conspiracy to profit from wars. He's also keenly interested in intelligent extra-terrestrial life.

The message is made quite clear by an exhibition staged in parallel with the conference. Its style is Madame Tussauds on a shoestring, and it features tableaux illustrating the carnage of the world wars, the Palestinian problem, Vietnam and of course Iraq.

There's a section comprising a cage and a couple of dummies wired up to electrodes with the song Rivers of Babylon pumping away in the background.

A helpful notice tells us that the "cheerful" music of Boney M was used as an instrument of torture in the Iraq prison at Abu Ghraib.

Dr Mahathir is busy signing autographs. A woman passes him a copy of her programme to sign.
"Oh Dr Mahathir", she coos, "you're more handsome in person than you are in photographs."

The 81-year-old statesman takes it in his stride.

His admirer persists. "I'm honoured, I'm standing in front of you, I'm shaking I feel like I'm in love for the first time," she says.

"Shameless flattery," I suggested to Dr Mahathir.

"Yes, it's flattery," he said with a grave smile.

.........

http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/6/42542651war1203go6.jpghttp://img50.imageshack.us/img50/8366/42542653war2203wo1.jpg

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6336333.stm

[Indonesiana]

Masya-Allah,

Good work, Dr. M! Unfortunately we Indonesians are too Westernized and ignorants since we prefer this fragile world to our faith...

[Behrooz Boonabi]

He needs to bring his war crimes tribunal to the US and straten things out. :)