EJIL Analysis

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US Appeals Court holds that Former Foreign Officials Entitled to Immunity in Civil Suit alleging War Crimes

May 3, 2009

The Second Circuit of the US Court of Appeals has recently (April 16, 09) held  in Matar v. Dichter that the former head of the Israeli General Security Service is immune in a civil suit brought under the US Aliens Tort Claims Act (28 USC  § 1350) alleging war crimes and extrajudicial killing. The suit relates to Dichter's participation in an attack on a suspected Hamas leader (Saleh Mustafah Shehadeh) in July 2002. Shehadeh's apartment was bombed by an Israeli military jet in attack which destroyed the apartment building and surrounding buildings. Apart from Shehadeh, 14 other people were killed in the attack. This case is part of  a growing list of US cases addressing the legal basis of the immunity of foreign officials. There is a split among the Circuits of the Court of Appeals as to whether foriegn officials are to be considered as an "agency or instrumentality" and thus entitled to immunity under §1603 the US's Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) (for recent analysis, see Bradley, Foreign Officials and Sovereign Immunity in US Courts, ASIL…

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US District Court Rules on Guantanamo Detention Standard

April 25, 2009

A US District Court has just released the first judicial opinion on the detention standard applicable to detainees in Guantanamo (formerly known as 'enemy combatants'), subsequent to the filing of the Obama administration's brief that we have previously extensively discussed. Judge Walton's opinion shows a valiant effort to grapple with the applicable international humanitarian law. Regrettably, however, I…

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Obama Administration to consider prosecution of lawyers for Torture: But why just the lawyers?

April 23, 2009

On Tuesday, President Obama suggested that the United States might consider prosecution of some of the individuals who are connected with the harsh interrogations techniques used by the CIA on Al Qaeda detainees (see here). Earlier, the US President had made it clear previously that those CIA personnel who had relied in good faith on the legal memos…

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Piracy off Somalia: a sketch of the legal framework

April 20, 2009

Dr Douglas Guilfoyle is a Lecturer in Law at University College London.  His research has focussed on the law of the sea and international and transanational criminal law. He is the author of ‘Piracy Off Somalia: UN Security Council Resolution 1816 and IMO Regional Counter-Piracy Efforts’ (2008) 57 International and Comparative Law Quarterly 690-699. His book Shipping Interdiction…

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The Water Cure with Saline Solution, or How a Modern Bureaucracy Does Torture

April 18, 2009

Having now read the four recently released ‘torture’ memos, I was perhaps most struck with their bureaucratic tone and the sterile overall narrative that they presented. The earlier Yoo/Bybee memos dealing with general issues such as the meaning of the term ‘torture’ in the UN Convention against Torture and US implementing legislation were rightly criticized for their facetious analysis.

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