INSCT Faculty Member David M. Crane will join other distinguished international law scholars and practitioners at “Crisis in Yemen: Accountability and Reparations,” an event designed to bring the world’s attention to a growing humanitarian disaster in this Middle East nation.
The panel discussion takes place at The Stimson Center in Washington, DC, on June 26, 2018, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. The simulcast can be viewed here.
Sponsored by the American Society of International Law, the Stimson Center, and the Washington Foreign Law Society, the panel also features Stephen Rapp, Former US Ambassador-At-Large for War Crimes; Mark Agrast, Executive Director, American Society of International Law; and Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch, among others. View the full list of panelists here.
The Yemen Civil War, which had its roots in the political upheaval of 2011-2012, has since turned into a complex conflict among a central, recognized government and its powerful Saudi-led allies, an alternative government in the country’s north backed by Houthi rebels, and several terrorist groups.
Escalating in 2015, the civil war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. An estimated three quarters of the civilian population have been affected by the devastation from warring parties on all sides. Death, disappearances, detentions, torture, displacement and famine are ravishing the country. A cholera epidemic is being exacerbated by raids on civilian populations.
Meanwhile, critical ports for delivery of food and medicines have been blocked. Arms and deadly munitions, funded by the US and UK, have proliferated. Secret prisons established inside and outside the country are detaining countless numbers of civilians, women, children, and aid workers.
The panel of experts, led by Rapp and Crane, will assess the situation on the ground in this stage of the Yemen crisis, and propose solutions drawn from fundamental international laws and standards.
INSCT Faculty Member David M. Crane testified in front of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations on June 19, 2018. The hearing, chaired by Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ), investigated postconflict justice options and human rights issues related to the long Sri Lankan Civil War, which lasted from 1983 to 2009.
Joining Crane as witnesses were J.S. Tissainayagam, journalist and human rights advocate;
Michael Jerryson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Youngstown State University; and John Sifton, Asia Advocacy Director, Human Rights Watch.
In his statement, Crane told the committee that, “I approach this issue as a neutral, someone who stands for the rule of law, particularly on the battlefield and for the protection of noncombatants. We live in an age of extremes. Dirty little wars arise across the globe. Parties to the conflict pay little heed to the laws of armed conflict. Many of these largely non-international armed conflicts see civilian casualties mount, most of
them women and children. The conflict in Sri Lanka was one such dirty little war, which saw the death and destruction of tens of thousands of human beings on both sides.”
Crane was a member of a panel of experts advising the Commission of Missing Persons set up by the Sri Lankan government in 2014. “I spent days walking the battlefields of the conflict in Sri Lanka, particularly of the final campaign in the Winter of 2009.”
Crane enumerated several humanitarian and war crimes issues that arose from the conflict and that have yet to be properly reconciled. These include violations of international humanitarian law committed by all sides, the intentional targeting of civilians in a campaign of terror to seek a military and political conclusion, and a brutal final campaign in the winter of 2009 that was exacerbated by an increasingly desperate Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam army (the LTTE, or “Tamil Tigers”).
Noted Chairman Smith, “Although the civil war ended almost 10 years ago, important work remains to make sure basic human rights are being respected in Sri Lanka. The resurgence of Buddhist Sinhalese nationalism poses a particular challenge to ethnic reconciliation. It is imperative for Congress to exercise leadership on this issue and ensure that a country as strategically located as Sri Lanka doesn’t collapse again.”
The conflict in Yemen is currently one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, yet is often forgotten by the international community. It is reported that close to 6,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict and almost 9,000 wounded as a result of indiscriminate and disproportionate airstrikes, artillery fire, and rocket launches. Many civilians languish and are tortured in secret prisons. The suffering of ordinary citizens is exacerbated by blockades of humanitarian aid and food.
On June 26, 2018, INSCT Faculty Member David M. Crane will join other distinguished speakers at a Stimson Center event to explore how war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the most egregious human rights violations can be addressed via international law to promote accountability, uphold fundamental humanitarian standards, and obtain reparations for the countless victims of the Yemen crisis.
Crane will lead the discussion with former Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Stephen Rapp. Discussants will be Amanda Catanzano, Senior Director for International Program, Policy, and Advocacy, International Rescue Committee; Waleed Al Hariri, Director of US Office, Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies; Raed Jarrar, Advocacy Director, Middle East and North Africa, Amnesty International; Kate Kizer, Policy Director, Win Without War; Don Picard, Chief Legal Advisor, Yemen Peace Project; and Sarah Leah Whitson, Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch.
Professor of Practice David M. Crane will donate his papers, photographs, and other memorabilia from his time as Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (SCSL) to the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School, an ABA-accredited law school in Charlottesville, VA.
Crane was SCSL prosecutor from 2002 to 2005. Before this appointment, he was Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law and Chairman of the International Law Department at the JAG School, a position he held after a US government career in the Office of Intelligence Review, Defense Intelligence Agency, and elsewhere.
The JAG School is one of the premier military legal history and war crimes research institutions in the world. Crane’s papers will join others related to notorious war crimes and crimes against humanity, including those on US vs. Calley, a court case arising from the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. Once housed at the JAG School, Crane’s SCSL papers will be available to academic and other researchers interested in international tribunals.
Corri Zoli, Director of Research for the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, discussed human rights and international humanitarian law (IHL) training with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) on April 19, 2018.
Zoli was invited to a teleconference session by recent graduate James I. McCully L’17, G’17, now an Analyst in International Affairs and Trade at GAO. A joint J.D./M.P.A. student, while at Syracuse McCully was a research assistant to professors Robert Ashford and David Driesen and Lead Articles Editor for the Journal of International Law and Commerce.
Explained McCully, the GAO is in the process of responding to a mandate in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act to review human rights and IHL training provided by the departments of State and Defense to the security forces of foreign nations.
Specifically, McCully’s team asked Zoli, an expert in international law, about her observations and views on human rights and IHL training being provided to foreign security forces; her thoughts about the Leahy Laws, which prohibit the US from providing military assistance to foreign security forces that violate human rights; and what assessments, monitoring, and evaluation are most effective when reviewing and auditing this type of training.
(WPR Morning Show | April 12, 2018) President Donald Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to issue a warning to Russia – and the world – of a possible military strike by the U.S. This messages comes on the heels of reports earlier this week of a suspected chemical attack in Syria’s rebel-held town of Douma. Join us for a look at the latest details surrounding this possible military action and push back from Russia before we turn to a (insert guest description) to look at the humanitarian concerns about the ongoing crisis in Syria.
(WUNC | April 10, 2018) In the 1990s, officials founded five criminal tribunals to seek international justice: four temporary bodies in Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia, and the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. The first four were put in place to handle specific civil war crimes. Since then, the issue of international criminal justice has faded.
Host Frank Stasio talks to David Crane about why international justice is hard to achieve. He’s the founding chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He’s also the co-editor of “The Founders: Four Pioneering Individuals Who Launched The First Modern-Era International Criminal Tribunals” (Cambridge University Press/2018). Crane talks about geopolitical changes that have diminished the political will to prosecute international human rights violations. He also discusses his book and how the five criminal tribunals were founded …
Successor to Robert H. Jackson Speaks at Jackson Center Link
(The Post-Journal | April 3, 2018) Inside the Robert H. Jackson Center on Monday sat David Crane, the first American chief prosecutor in an international war crimes tribunal since Robert H. Jackson, himself, during the Nuremberg Trial. Crane, former chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, indicted and later convicted Charles Taylor, president of Liberia, marking the first time a head of state was held accountable for war crimes.
“No one is above the law,” Crane said regarding the legacy of the Sierra Leone tribunal.
Crane’s mandate as chief prosecutor was to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity that were committed during the decade-long Sierra Leone Civil War.
Crane also recently released a book titled “The Founders: Four Pioneering Individuals Who Launched The First Modern-Era International Criminal Tribunals.” The book, written primarily by Crane, features first-hand accounts of the creation of four separate tribunals that brought justice to places such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone.
Greg Peterson, director of the Robert H. Jackson Center, conducted the interview and noted that Crane created a lot of precedents regarding international war crime tribunals. Peterson described Crane’s new book, “The Founders,” as a detailed history of the “four foremost prosecutors since Jackson.”
The four prosecutors included in the book include Crane, Richard Goldstone, Robert Peit and Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
“He is in a high echelon of prosecutors,” Peterson said of Crane. “We’re thrilled that he’s here.”
Crane recently announced he would be retiring from his alma matter the Syracuse University College of Law where he taught as a professor of practice since 2006. While there, he taught international law, international humanitarian law, military law and national security law.
Prior to the public interview, a four minute video was played that showed segments from Taylor’s indictment.
“The path will be strewn with the bones of the dead, the moans of the mutilated, the cries of agony of the tortured echoing down to the valley of death,” Crane began his opening statement during the tribunal.
Crane said during the interview that he was personally attacked by other heads of state in Africa because of the indictment. After being indicted, Taylor was later sentenced to 50 years of imprisonment …
David M. Crane at the Special Court for Sierra Leone.
After teaching as a Professor of Practice at his alma mater since 2006, David M. Crane L’80 has announced that he will retire from the College of Law in August 2018. Crane taught international criminal law, international humanitarian law, military law, and national security law. As a faculty member of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism, he developed interdisciplinary projects and courses with colleagues from across the University, including, most recently, a groundbreaking course on media and atrocities with Professor Ken Harper of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
At the College, Crane founded Impunity Watch, an online student-run law review and public service blog, and the Syrian Accountability Project (SAP), an internationally recognized effort among students, activists, journalists, and non-governmental organizations to document war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Syrian Civil War.
“It has been a pleasure teaching at my alma mater,” says Crane. “The hundreds—perhaps thousands—of students I have taught and placed in jobs or at other universities has inspired me and excited me in ways I never imagined. I hope I gave them a spark to go out in the world and make a difference.”
“For the past 12 years, David Crane has taught many hundreds of students about the paramount importance of the rule of law, the scourge of impunity, and that ordinary human beings—especially those who are the victims of atrocities visited upon them by the powerful—must always be the focus of justice,” says College of Law Dean Craig M. Boise. “I know that our students have been honored to work for Impunity Watch and the Syrian Accountability Project and that they were often spellbound in the classroom by David’s stories from his days in the military and working for the Special Court for Sierra Leone.”
Crane, Gerard Araud, and Dr. Stuart Hamilton give a report on the allegations of torture in Syria at the United Nations on April 15, 2014.
Before Crane joined the College of Law faculty, from 2002 to 2005, he was the founding Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), appointed to that position by Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan. Serving as a UN Undersecretary-General, Crane’s mandate was to prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s. Among those he indicted was Liberian President Charles Taylor, the first sitting African head of state to be held accountable in this way. Taylor was found guilty in April 2012 of all 11 charges levied by the SCSL, and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Crane’s UN appointment was preceded by more than 30 years in the US federal government. Crane held numerous positions, including Director of the Office of Intelligence Review; Assistant General Counsel of the Defense Intelligence Agency; an appointment to the US Senior Executive Service; and Waldemar A. Solf Professor of International Law at the US Army Judge Advocate General’s School. Among Crane’s most lasting legacies are the desk books he edited for publication by the JAG School: The Law of War, Operational Law, Counterintelligence Coordination, Legal Aspects of Future War, and Cases and Materials on Intelligence Law.
Crane at a mock press conference during his Media and Atrocities course in 2017.
For the past six years, College of Law and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs students have assisted Crane’s efforts toward justice for the people of Syria. In particular, the student-led Syrian Accountability Project has documented humanitarian crimes committed by all sides during the Syrian Civil War. They have catalogued that information—relative to applicable bodies of international law, such as the Geneva Conventions, the Rome Statute, and Syrian Penal Law—in an extensive conflict narrative, crime base matrix, and in several white papers. The aim of SAP’s work is to guide a future prosecution team toward the administration of postconflict justice for Syrians. In 2016, the Syrian Accountability Project was praised by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) on the floor of the US House of Representatives for its work gathering evidence of atrocities.
Crane’s other recent public service work includes chairing the board of the Robert H. Jackson Center and the creation of the center’s annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs; the founding of I Am Syria, a non-profit media and educational campaign that seeks to educate the world about the Syrian conflict; an appointed to the Sri Lankan Advisory Council to the Presidential Commission on Missing Persons; membership on the US Institute of Peace Fragility Study Group; and, in 2017, work on behalf of Qatar decrying the embargo of that nation by other Middle East states. Also in 2017, Crane joined other distinguished legal and public policy experts on the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture, a non-profit, non-governmental organization created to address the state’s role in CIA torture and rendition during the War on Terror.
Crane has received numerous accolades and awards for his service to international law and human rights, including honorary degrees from his alma mater Ohio University and from Case Western Reserve University. Crane has been awarded a Medal of Merit from Ohio University, a Distinguished Service Award from Syracuse University College of Law, and a George Arents Pioneer Medal from Syracuse University. Among Crane’s other awards are the Intelligence Community Gold Seal Medallion, the US Department of Defense Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, a Legion of Merit award from the US Armed Forces, and an Eclipse Award from the Center for Victims of Torture. Crane was made an honorary Paramount Chief by the Civil Society Organizations of Sierra Leone, and in 2006, he was given a key to the City of Highland Park, IL, where he attended high school.
Crane recently published The Founders, the complex and compelling story of his and his three fellow international prosecutors’ efforts to set up the world’s first international tribunals and special courts.
Crane’s experience investigating and prosecuting some of the world’s most appalling crimes and his expertise in humanitarian law has led to many media inquiries over the years by the world’s foremost news outlets. For instance, he has appeared as an expert on NBC’s The Wanted, a 2009 six-part series focusing on international justice; on the BBC’s documentary Mad Dog: Gadaffi’s Secret World in 2014; and in a lengthy 2016 profile in Der Spiegel in the wake of the release of the SAP white paper “Through a Window Darkly.”
The day after the release of the “Caesar Report” in 2014—first announced by The Guardian—worldwide media rushed to seek comment from Crane. “In the eyes of the media, David Crane L’80 is a wanted man,” explained SU News in its coverage. “[Crane] spent much of the day on Tuesday in a small TV studio located in Newhouse. From there, he spoke to reporters around the world … In one afternoon, he completed interviews with Sky News, CBC, the BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. That was before taking a break at 5 p.m. to teach class.”
Never before have international chief prosecutors written in detail about the challenges they faced, but with the publication of The Founders—co-edited by David M. Crane, Professor of Practice, Syracuse University College of Law; Leila Sadat of Washington University School of Law, St Louis, MO; and Michael P. Scharf of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, OH—comes the complex story of four individuals who created the world’s first international tribunals and special courts.
A candid look at how the founding prosecutors sought justice for millions of victims, the backdrop to these tales are four of the most appalling conflicts of modern times: the Balkan wars in the former Yugoslavia (1991-2001), which included the Bosnian genocide and led to hundreds of thousands of casualties and displaced peoples; the 1994 mass slaughter of Tutsi in Rwanda by members of the Hutu majority government; the Cambodian genocide (1975-1979), perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge; and crimes against humanity committed during the Sierra Leone Civil War (1991-2002). The crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during these conflicts spurred the creation of international tribunals designed to bring the perpetrators of unimaginable atrocities to justice.
When Richard Goldstone, David M. Crane, Robert Petit, and Luis Moreno-Ocampo received their orders from the international community, each set out on a quest to build unique postconflict justice mechanisms and launch their first prosecutions. South African jurist Goldstone founded the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which indicted 161 individuals between 1997 and 2004. Crane was the Chief Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone from 2002 until 2005, indicting, among others, then-President of Liberia Charles Taylor for his role in crimes committed against Sierra Leoneans. (Incidentally, Crane was the first American to be named the chief prosecutor of an international war crimes tribunal since Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945.)The founder of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia was Canadian Robert Petit, who led the investigation and prosecution of five of the senior-most leaders of the Khmer Rouge. Lastly, Argentinian lawyer Luis Moreno-Ocampo is most famous for becoming the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. During his tenure, which began in 2003, Moreno-Ocampo opened investigations into crimes committed in Burundi, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Libya, Mali, Uganda, and Georgia.
“As we worked on this book it occurred to me the extraordinary professional and personal risk we took in establishing these ground-breaking justice mechanisms. We all had successful careers when we literally received ‘the call’ asking us to stop our life trajectory and to take on a task with absolutely no certainty of success,” says Crane, who continues to work on humanitarian and atrocity law issues at Syracuse University College of Law, including with the student-run Syrian Accountability Project. “We were in unchartered waters, yet we were drawn to the possibility of bringing justice to victims of horrific acts. This we did, and we took up the flaming sword of justice. It was an honor and a privilege to be asked to found these international courts.”
With no blueprint and little precedent, each prosecutor became a pathfinder. The Founders offers behind-the-scenes, first-hand stories of these historic journeys, the challenges the prosecutors faced, the obstacles they overcame, and the successes they achieved. Contributions are made by the founders themselves, as well as former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Hans Corell, Leila Nadya Sadat, Michael Scharf, William Schabas, and David Scheffer.
INSCT Faculty Member David M. Crane will join other distinguished international law scholars and practitioners at “Crisis in Yemen: Accountability and Reparations,” an event designed to bring the world’s attention to a growing humanitarian disaster in this Middle East nation.
