Inner City Press

Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

These reports are usually available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis

Google
  Search innercitypress.com Search WWW (censored?)

In Other Media-eg AJE, FP, Georgia, NYT Azerbaijan, CSM Click here to contact us     .

,



Follow us on TWITTER

Home -

These reports are usually available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis

CONTRIBUTE

RSS

ICP on YouTube

BloggingHeads.tv

UN: Sri Lanka

VoA: NYCLU

FOIA Finds  

Google, Asked at UN About Censorship, Moved to Censor the Questioner, Sources Say, Blaming UN - Update - Editorial

Support this work by buying this book

Click on cover for secure site orders

also includes "Toxic Credit in the Global Inner City"
 

 

 


Community
Reinvestment

Bank Beat

Freedom of Information
 

How to Contact Us



On DRC, Drones and Death Penalty, France Has Benin Answer for It, AFP for Ladsous

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- Where is the line between the judicially ordered death penalty and the quasi- or pseudo-judicial process now associated with anti-terrorist drone strikes by the US and other countries?

  Inner City Press put the question to three UN ambassadors, including Gerard Araud of France which is engaged in such an anti-terrorist or anti-Jihadist fight in Mali, as well as to two representatives of Amnesty International.

  Amnesty's report on the death penalty, under embargo until today, mentions at page 23 the “increased number of extrajudicial executions” in North Korea.

  Inner City Press cited this, and asked AI about Obama's drones strikes, and Ambassador Araud about France's strikes in Mali.

At first, Araud let the Ambassador of Benin answer for France about Mali. After his answer -- and after another question was asked by another journalist, Araud to his credit re-took the microphone to answer.

He said strikes in Mali are not through the judicial process, and follow the laws of war. But isn't that what Obama, and Bush before him, have said?

How can one be against execution through a judicial process, but for death from the sky with much less due process? That is the question.

Amnesty International stated a position of principle, not unlike that of D-G Shetty on not arming the rebels in Syria: AI is always against the death penalty, and calls Obama's recent moves only a “patina.”

  On the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country with a truly abysmal justice system, if the failure to prosecute those in the two battalions involved in the mass rape of 126 women and in November in late November 2012 is any guide, Inner City Press asked if the UN peacekeeping mission there should be doing more, and if any of the Ambassador could state anything DRC has done about the rapes.

  Again it was Benin's Ambassador who answered, and interestingly. But what about Araud? France not only claims “the pen” in the Security Council on the DRC -- the head of Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, is the fourth Frenchman in a row to hold the post.

  Ladsous claimed to have given an ultimatum to the DRC government, then let the deadline pass without disclosing any action taken. He has refused to answer since. Araud make a point of answering on Mali -- appreciated -- but did not on the DRC. Watch this site.

Footnote: Relatedly, Agence France Presse's Tim Witcher asking a soft ball question in French. On the Minova rapes and other Peacekeeping spin, he had been the pass-through for Ladsous' half answers to question Ladsous refuses to answer from Inner City Press.

But now a new low has been hit, alongside the UN's non-consensual raid of Inner City Press' office and the leaking of photographs of its desk and bookshelf to BuzzFeed. Witcher filed a complaint on March 8 with UN Security beginning with a question Inner City Press asked Ladsous (about the Minova rapes) and how it was asked.

  Who does Witcher represent? AFP has been asked, in light of Witcher's March 8 false complaint for Ladsous, who has served on an AFP management board, and we are waiting for a response. Watch this site.

Share |

* * *

These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for Sept 26, 2011 New Yorker on Inner City Press at UN

Click for  BloggingHeads.tv re Libya, Sri Lanka, UN Corruption

Feedback: Editorial [at] innercitypress.com

UN Office: S-253, UN, NY 10017 USA Tel: 212-963-1439

Reporter's mobile (and weekends): 718-716-3540

Google
  Search innercitypress.com  Search WWW (censored?)

Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.

            Copyright 2006-2013 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com