The long road to justice Anwar Raslan betrayed no emotion as he stood to hear the judges’ verdict. The courtroom in Koblenz, a small city sandwiched between the Rhine and Moselle rivers in western Germany, was packed. Since the early hours of the morning, victims and their families, journalists and activists, had been patiently queueing for a spot in the […]
On Tuesday 22 February, the District Court of The Hague closed its latest universal jurisdiction trial, against an Afghan-Dutch national alleged to have been head of the Pul-e-Charki prison in Kabul in the 1980s. But the trial has been rife with challenges around this war crimes probe.
THE HAGUE An elderly Afghan man went on trial in a Dutch court on Wednesday accused of war crimes while in charge of a notorious Kabul jail for the communist regime in the 1980s.The 76-year-old identified as Abdul R. is accused of being the commander of Pul-e-Charki jail where prisoners were allegedly held without trial, tortured and executed.The suspect, who came to The