Drawing on the expertise of scholars from a variety of backgrounds, this anthology specifically seeks to shed light on this genocide from a multidisciplinary perspective and serve as a step for developing the future scholarship about the Sayfo.

Winner, "Publishers Weekly" Best Books of 2002, Non-Fiction

"In badly constructed books, the reader doesn't care what happens on the next page. In well-constructed books, the reader can't wait to see what happens on the next page. This book is a rare, third kind: The reader dreads what will happen on the next page. Nevertheless, he feels compelled to read on. . . . McAllester takes the reader not only along the streets where atrocities have been committed but inside homes while they are happening. As is the case with many good reads, the power of such scenes comes from the order in which events are presented. First the author develops a character, then later in the book informs you about his fate. Or the author will describe how a family is brutalized, then describes, almost as an aside -- in the course of a succeeding chapter about his own adventures in war-torn Kosovo -- how he meets a traumatized eyewitness to the previous account. In this way, the reader becomes an observer not only of what was happening inside Kosovo during the NATO bombardment but of what was happening to McAllester himself and how he managed to assemble his book."
--"Washington Post"

"The power of McAllester's extraordinary book lies not in its comprehensiveness or its literary polish-though there are many brilliantly moving and perceptive passages-but in its shocking authenticity and deep moral concern. One gets the sense that he risked his life not simply to pursue a story, timely and important as it was, but because of the enormity of the evil being done and his conviction that, in a world of bland policy abstractions, what happened in those days inside Kosovo had to be told."
--"New Leader"

"McAllester powerfully concludes that a sickening mixture of greed, ethnic hostility, and wartime nihilism has displaced the healing power for love and reconciliation for the forseeable future. One of the most thoughtful accounts of the conflict in Kosovo to date conveyed with taut journalistic clarity that should ensure the book a broad range of readers."
--"Kirkus, Starred Review"

"This account is not of the avirtual wara that Westerners saw on their television screens but of the real effects on people who consider the ravaged area home."
--"Library Journal, Starred Review"

"McAllester's spare, understated prose is potent as is his exploration of the human side of geopolitics and war."
--"Publishers Weekly, Starred Review"

"In a twist that took McAllester as much by surprise as it will the reader, it appears that Isa Bala lived in that ill-defined world too, a world where people make deals and concessions just to survive another day. Perhaps he believed that through such compromises, his family would be safe. if so, he was tragically wrong."
--"Sunday Telegraph (London)"

"Beyond the Mountains of the Damned is a gripping, if depressing, account of what McAllester found among the ruins. . . . There is no bravado. . . . He offers vivid thumbnail sketches of Kosovar warriors in the field."
-- "Newsday"

"McAllester offers us the kind of specific detail that we need to make other people's lives human to us. Even more importantly, he tells us how it is to be the oppressor, or at least one of the minions of the oppressors"
--"American Book Review"

For every survivor of a crime, there is a criminal who forces his way into the victim's thoughts longafter the act has been committed.

Reporters weren't allowed into Kosovo during the war without the permission of the Yugoslavian government but Matthew McAllester went anyway. In Beyond the Mountains of the Damned he tells the story of Pec, Kosovo's most destroyed city and the site of the earliest and worst atrocities of the war, through the lives of two menone Serb and one Kosovar. They had known each other, and been neighbors for years before one visited tragedy on the other. With a journalist's eye for detail McAllester asks the great question of war: What kind of men could devastate an entire city, killing whole families, and feel no sense of guilt? The answer lies in the culture of gangsterism and ethnic hatred that began with the collapse of Yugoslavia.

In March of 1999, the world watched thousands of Albanian refugees pour out of Kosovo, carrying stories of the terror that drove them from their homes. To Isa Bala and his family, Albanian Muslims who stayed in Pec during the NATO bombardment, the war in Kosovo was not about cruise missiles and geopolitics. It was about tiptoeing between survival and death in the town that saw the fiercest destruction, the most thorough eviction of the Albanian population and killings whose brutality demands explanation. To Nebojsa Minic and other Serb militiamen who ruled with murder, the conflict was about the exercise of power. Today they are alive and well in the new Yugoslavia. So unconcerned are they over the prospect of ever being held accountable for their crimes that they were willing to sit down over coffee after the war and discuss in detail their brief, brutal reign.

The My Lai massacre of March 16, 1968 and the court martial of Lt. William Calley a year and a half later are among the bleakest episodes in American history and continue to provide a volatile focus for debates about the Vietnam War. Other books have exposed the facts surrounding the incident; "Facing My Lai" now examines its haunting legacy through a unique exchange of contemporary viewpoints.

This powerful book emerges from a stellar gathering of historians, military professionals, writers, mental health experts, and Vietnamese and American war veterans convened to memorialize the tragedy. The cast of prominent speakers included journalists Seymour Hersh and David Halberstam, novelist Tim O'Brien, psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, military prosecutor William Eckhardt, and veterans Hugh Thompson and Ron Ridenhour--the two true heroes in the My Lai story. David Anderson's reflective recasting of their presentations creates an impassioned chorus of voices that demonstrates why this tragedy remains one of the key emblems of the American experience in Vietnam.

These authors address many of the troubling questions that still persist about My Lai. Why had it been identified as a Viet Cong stronghold? What orders were the troops actually given? Why didn't someone stop the slaughter? But these questions are asked again in the hope that they might lead to a better understanding of what My Lai means for us now.

As these authors show, our nation is still trying to come to grips with the bitter legacies of the Vietnam War. A grim window into the darker side of American history (like the massacre at Wounded Knee), My Lai reminds us of humanity's baffling capacity for atrocity within the crucible of war. Facing My Lai does not allow us to forget or hide from such horrors, but it also seeks to heal the deep wounds inflicted by the war. Its unflinching look at the past ultimately leads us away from darkness and towards a more enlightened understanding of a war that in many ways is not over yet.

How does ideology in some states radicalise to such an extent as to become genocidal? Can the causes of radicalisation be seen as internal or external? Examining the ideological evolution in the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and during the break up of Yugoslavia, Elisabeth Hope Murray seeks to answer these questions in this comparative work.

This volume focuses on the impact of the Armenian Genocide on different academic disciplines at the crossroads of the centennial commemorations of the Genocide. Its interdisciplinary nature offers the opportunity to analyze the Genocide from different angles using the lens of several fields of study.

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN "safe area" since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts. Evaluating how institutions establish facts and ascribe responsibilities, this volume presents a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the very possibility of writing a history of the present time.

How can defendants be tried if they cannot understand the charges being raised against them? Can a witness testify if the judges and attorneys cannot understand what the witness is saying? Can a judge decide whether to convict or acquit if she or he cannot read the documentary evidence? The very viability of international criminal prosecution and adjudication hinges on the massive amounts of translation and interpreting that are required in order to run these lengthy, complex trials, and the procedures for handling the demands facing language services. This book explores the dynamic courtroom interactions in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in which witnesses testify through an interpreter about translations, attorneys argue through an interpreter about translations and the interpreting, and judges adjudicate on the interpreted testimony and translated evidence.

The diversity of Kurdish communities across the Middle East is now recognized as central to understanding both the challenges and opportunities for their representation and politics. Yet little scholarship has focused on the complexities within these different groups and the range of their experiences. This book diversifies the literature on Kurdish Studies by offering close analyses of subjects which have not been adequately researched, and in particular, by highlighting the Kurds' relationship to the Yazidis. Case studies include: the political ideas of Ehmede Xani, "the father of Kurdish nationalism"; Kurdish refugees in camps in Iraq; the perception of the Kurds by Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turks in modern Western Turkey; and the important connections and shared heritage of the Kurds and the Yazidis, especially in the aftermath of the 2014 ISIS attacks. The book comprises the leading voices in Kurdish Studies and combines in-depth empirical work with theoretical and conceptual discussions to take the debates in the field in new directions. The study is divided into three thematic sections to capture new insights into the heterogeneous aspects of Kurdish history and identity. In doing so, contributors explain why we need to pay close attention to the shifting identities and the diversity of the Kurds, and what implications this has for Middle East Studies and Minority Studies more generally.

Since unification, the Federal Republic of Germany has made vaunted efforts to make amends for the crimes of the Third Reich. Yet it remains the case that the demands for restitution by many countries that were occupied during the Second World War are unresolved, and recent demands from Greece and Poland have only reignited old debates. This book reconstructs the German occupation of Poland and Greece and gives a thorough accounting of these debates. Working from the perspective of international law, it deepens the scholarly discourse around the issue, clarifying the 'never-ending story' of German reparations policy and making a principled call for further action. A compilation of primary sources comprising 125 annotated key texts (512 pages) on the complexity of reparations discussions covering the period between 1941 and the end of 2017 is available for free on the Berghahn Books website, doi: 10.3167/9781800732575.dd.

This title recounts the massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema and examines its after effects. During the Nazi occupation of Italy, SS officers were charged with destroying anti-Fascist and anti-Nazi partisans. Paolo Pezzino not only reconstructs the events, but deals with the 'forgetting' of the massacre.

Is it possible that the soldiers of mass atrocities-Adolph Eichmann in Nazi Germany and Alfredo Astiz in Argentina's Dirty War, for example-act under conditions that prevent them from recognizing their crimes? In the aftermath of catastrophic, state-sponsored mass murder, how are criminal courts to respond to those who either gave or carried out the military orders that seem unequivocally criminal? This important book addresses Hannah Arendt's controversial argument that perpetrators of mass crimes are completely unaware of their wrongdoing, and therefore existing criminal laws do not adequately address these defendants. Mark Osiel applies Arendt's ideas about the kind of people who implement bureaucratized large-scale atrocities to Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970s, and he also delves into the social conditions that could elicit such reprehensible conduct. He focuses on Argentine navy captain Astiz, who led one of the most notorious abduction squads, to discover how he and other junior officers could justify the murders of more than ten thousand suspected "subversives." Osiel concludes that legal stipulations labeling certain deeds as manifestly illegal are indefensible. He calls for a significant change in the laws of war to preserve both justice and the possibility of dialogue between factions in such sharply divided societies as Argentina. Osiel's proposals have profound implications for future prosecutions of Pinochet's lieutenants, Milosevic's henchmen, the willing executioners of Rwanda and East Timor, and other perpetrators of state-endorsed murder and torture.

Command responsibility, or executive accountability, assumes that leaders are responsible for the actions of their subordinates. If subordinates misbehave, violate basic moral laws, transgress international law, or thwart international standards of behavior, their leader may be called before to justice. Standards that set the boundaries of human action have been evolving for many millennia, with some degree of precision arriving after the post-World War II international war crimes prosecutions. The United Nations and other organizations have helped codify the international law under which commanders may be held responsible. This book explores the factor that have moved civilization closer to a standard approach to rule of law and the accountability of leaders for the actions of those they command.

The tools of reason offer the best hope for the international community to confront the increasing incidents of hate throughout the world. A historically informed, normative examination of the elements of the crime of genocide provides an excellent case study of how the law, reason's handmaiden, enhances understanding and improves practical ways of dealing with global injustices. How should we confront hate? As political activists, we could resort to fighting hate with hate. As concerned citizens, we could consciously ignore or actively protest hate. As committed educators, we could put the implements and survivors of hate on display. As committed scholars, we could resuscitate the idea of evil. As humanitarian jurists, we could put individual hate-mongers on trial. Part I of this book makes a case for making the maximum use of reason to deal with hate. This means that we should actively debate those who promote hate. Further, as a close look at the history of applying law to incidents of hate and violence illustrates, the courtroom proves to be an excellent place to demonstrate the virtues of applying the tools of reason, not to global evils, but to the grave injustices of the world. In Part II, Simon demonstrates the power of legal analysis in enhancing our understanding of genocide, probably the worst injustice imaginable. A close examination of each purported element of the crime of genocide redirects misguided turns taken by international jurists. Contrary to a more realistic perspective adopted at the Nuremberg trials, jurists have mistakenly modeled international criminal law on national criminal law, which focuses on individual responsibility. However, the cases of grave injustices throughout the 20th century amply demonstrate the primary collective responsibility underlying incidences of genocide. The failure to prosecute criminal organizations for genocide has and will continue to have disastrous results. While the Nuremberg tribunal at least disbanded the responsible Nazi organizations, current war crimes tribunals have allowed organizations responsible for the Rwandan genocide to continue to wreak havoc throughout Central Africa. If the international community cannot forge a common understanding of genocide, then it has little hope of establishing an international legal order or a global ethics.

Theodor Meron is probably the world's most important author on issues of international humanitarian law. This book is a collection of his essays on war crimes and related areas, together with a new concluding chapter, from which the book takes its title, which brings together the themes explored in the essays.

This book is the first comprehensive biography of Lemkin based on his papers. It highlights the role of culture in Lemkin's campaign for a Genocide convention and his use of the concept in historical research. It throws fresh light on the attempt by the British government to block the convention. This book is the first complete biography of Raphael Lemkin, the father of the United Nations Genocide Convention, based on his papers; and shows how his campaign for an international treaty succeeded. In addition, the book covers Lemkin's inauguration of the historical study of past genocides.

Combining both legal and empirical research, this book explores the statutory aspects and practice of Gacaca Courts (inkiko gacaca), the centrepiece of Rwanda's post-genocide transitional justice system, assessing their contribution to truth, justice and reconciliation. The volume expands the knowledge regarding these courts, assessing not only their performance in terms of formal justice and compliance with human rights standards but also their actual modus operandi. Scholars and practitioners have progressively challenged the idea that genocide should be addressed exclusively through 'westernised' criminal law, arguing that the uniqueness of each genocidal setting requires specific context-sensitive solutions. Rwanda's experience with Gacaca Courts has emerged as a valuable opportunity for testing this approach, offering never previously tried homegrown solutions to the violence experienced in 1994 and beyond. Due to the unprecedented number of individuals brought to trial, the absence of lawyers, the participative nature, and the presence of lay judges directly elected by the Rwandan population, Gacaca Courts have attracted the attention of researchers from different disciplines and triggered dichotomous reactions and appraisals. The tensions existing within the literature are addressed, anchoring the assessment of Gacaca in a comprehensive legal analysis in conjunction with field research. Through the direct observation of Gacaca trials, and by holding interviews and informal talks with survivors, perpetrators, ordinary Rwandans, academics and the staff of NGOs, a purely legalistic perspective is overcome, offering instead an innovative bottom-up approach to meta-legal concepts such as justice, fairness, truth and reconciliation. Outlining their strengths and shortcomings, this book highlights what aspects of Gacaca Courts can be useful in other post-genocide contexts and provides crucial lessons learnt in the realm of transitional justice. The primary audience this book is aimed at consists of researchers working in the areas of international criminal law, transitional justice, genocide, restorative justice, African studies, human rights and criminology, while practitioners, students and others with a professional interest in the topical matters that are addressed may also find the issues raised relevant to their practice or field of study. Pietro Sullo teaches public international law and international diplomatic law at the Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent in Brussels. He is particularly interested in international human rights law, transitional justice, international criminal law, constitutional transitions and refugee law. After earning his Ph.D. at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Dr. Sullo worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg as a senior researcher and as a coordinator of the International Doctoral Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment. He was also Director of the European Master's Programme in Human Rights and Democratization (E.MA) in Venice from 2013 to 2015 and lastly he has worked for international NGOs and as a legal consultant for the Libya Constitution Drafting Assembly on human rights and transitional justice.

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb Army commanded by General Ratko Mladic attacked the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN "safe area" since 1993, and massacred about 8,000 Bosniac men. While the responsibility for the massacre itself lays clearly with the Serb political and military leadership, the question of the responsibility of various international organizations and national authorities for the fall of the enclave is still passionately discussed, and has given rise to various rumors and conspiracy theories. Follow-up investigations by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and by several commissions have dissipated most of these rumors and contributed to a better knowledge of the Srebrenica events and the part played by the main local and international actors. This volume represents the first systematic, comparative analysis of those investigations. It brings together analyses from both the external standpoint of academics and the inside perspective of various professionals who participated directly in the inquiries, including police officers, members of parliament, high-ranking civil servants, and other experts. Evaluating how institutions establish facts and ascribe responsibilities, this volume presents a historiographical and epistemological reflection on the very possibility of writing a history of the present time.

Isabelle Delpla is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University Montpellier III. Her research focuses on international ethics and justice and the relationships between philosophy and anthropology. She has conducted fieldwork in Bosnia with victim associations, Hague witnesses, and convicted war criminals.

Xavier Bougarel is Researcher at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. He is currently researching the wars of the 1990s and their aftermath in the former Yugoslavia and the transformations of Islam in the post-Communist Balkans.

Jean-Louis Fournel is Professor at the University of Paris VIII. His research focuses on the history of warfare, political thought, and the rhetoric of the Italian Renaissance. Between 1997 and 2001, he directed several European cooperation programs with universities in Bosnia- Herzegovina. In 1994, while the city was under siege, he co-organized the initiative for a sister relationship between his university and that of Sarajevo.

In 1947 German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was tried and convicted of war crimes committed during World War II. He was held responsible for his troops having executed nearly 9,000 Italian citizens--women, children, elderly men--in retaliation for partisan attacks. His conviction, however, created a real dilemma for the United States and western Europe. While some sought the harshest punishments available for anyone who had participated in the war crimes of the Nazi regime, others believed that the repatriation of alleged war criminals would help secure the allegiance of a rearmed West Germany in the dangerous new Cold War against the Soviet Union.

Kerstin von Lingen's close analysis of the Kesselring case reveals for the first time how a network of veterans, lawyers, and German sympathizers in Britain and America achieved the commutation of Kesselring's death sentence and his eventual release--reinforcing German popular conceptions that he had been innocent all along and that the Wehrmacht had fought a "clean war" in Italy. Synthesizing the work of contemporary German and Italian historians with her own exhaustive archival research, she shows that Kesselring bore much greater guilt for civilian deaths than had been proven in court--and that the war on the southern front had been far from clean.

Von Lingen weaves together strands of the story as diverse as Winston Churchill's ability to mobilize support among British elites, Basil Liddell Hart's need to be recognized as an important military thinker, and the Cold War fears of the "Senators' Circle" in the United States. Through this rich narrative, she shows how international politics shaped the trial's proceedings and outcome--as well as the memory and meaning of the war for German citizens--and sheds new light on the complex interplay between the combatants' efforts to "master the past" and the threatening state of international relations in the early Cold War.

In analyzing the efforts to clear Kesselring's name, von Lingen shows that the case was about much more than the fate of one convicted individual; it also underscored the pressure to wrap up the war crimes issue--and German guilt--in order to get on with the business of bringing a rearmed Germany into the Western alliance. Kesselring's Last Battle sheds new light on the "politics of memory" by unraveling a twisted thread in postwar history as it shows how historical truth is sometimes sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

This accessible book examines poisoning in various contexts of international conflict. It explores the modern-day use of poison in warfare, terrorism, assassination, mass suicide, serial poisoning within healthcare, and as capital punishment. It examines a broad range of international cases from the Americas, Europe, Japan, India and more in relation to Situational Crime Prevention and its theoretical precursors, in order to explore potential prevention strategies and the ways in which perpetrators circumvent them. Case studies include analysis of attempts on the lives of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, the Tokyo subway attacks, the crimes of Dr. Harold Shipman and the Heaven's Gate and Jonestown cults. For each, the means, motive, opportunity, location, and perpetrator-victim relationship is examined. This accessible book speaks to students of criminology and those interested in penology, careers in criminal justice, homicide detectives, anti-terrorism personnel, forensic pathologists and toxicologists.

In June 1998, diplomats met in Rome to draft the Statute of an International Criminal Court. Based on the precedents of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals and of the War Crimes Tribunals for Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the new Court will judge individuals, not States. Unpunished mass slaughters have occurred in many countries. National justice is often ineffective. Truth and reconciliation commissions complement but do not replace justice. International 'Peoples' Tribunals have no international legitimacy. It is hoped that a permanent, international criminal court may combat impunity and deter more crimes.