Governments contest human rights accountability of troops in Kosovo

THE GUARDIAN (UK), Monday November 13, 2006 By Clare Dyer, legal editor

European court to decide on actions of Nato forces
Warning over future of multinational operations

The British government will argue at the European court of human rights in Strasbourg this week that it should not be held accountable for human rights breaches by British troops in the course of military operations abroad.

The grand chamber of 17 Strasbourg judges will decide whether the European convention on human rights applies to the military operations of European troops abroad.

Britain and five other European countries have intervened in a case brought against France for failing to safeguard the lives of two Kosovan boys by ensuring that cluster bombs dropped by Nato forces were cleared up. One boy was killed and his brother was blinded and disfigured.

The seven governments argue that no international operations of this kind could ever be mounted in the future if the participating states were told that they would be held accountable before the European court for any violations of human rights they committed in the course of their military operations.

The case comes amid growing pressure for an international ban on cluster bombs, which disperse numbers of bomblets, many of which initially fail to explode and create a lethal trap for the unwary.

A new international treaty on explosive remnants of war, including cluster bombs and landmines, will require countries to clear up unexploded bombs and mines in future. Cluster bombs are thought to have killed about 10,000 people, most of them children.

The Strasbourg case is being brought on behalf of Gadaf Behrami and his brother, Bekir, who were playing with other boys in the hills in the Sipolje area of Mitrovica, Kosovo, in March 2000 when they came across a number of undetonated cluster bombs left behind after the Nato bombardment in 1999. The Behrami family had been in Switzerland for nine years as refugees and had returned to Kosovo only the year before, thinking their homeland was now safe.

One of the boys threw a cluster bomb into the air. It detonated and killed 11-year-old Gadaf and seriously injured Bekir, then aged nine.

At the time Mitrovica was within the sector of Kosovo for which a multinational brigade led by France was responsible. It was one of four brigades making up the international security force (Kfor) presence in Kosovo, mandated by a UN security council resolution.

Lawyers for the Behrami family say that despite the French Kfor troops' express mandate to ensure a safe and secure environment for returning refugees, they failed to take any steps to remove the Nato cluster bombs which they knew were in a particular location in the hills near Mitrovica. Although they were aware of the risk to local children, they took no steps to inform the local families of the dangers, fence off or mark the area, or dispose of the unexploded ordnance.

The case, which will be heard on Wednesday in Strasbourg, is seen as so important that it will go before the grand chamber instead of the usual court of nine judges. It will be heard with a second case, brought against France and Norway by an Albanian Kosovan held in detention by Kfor commanders without trial.

The 1999 Nato intervention in Kosovo was declared to have been made to protect the people of Kosovo from further human rights violations in the region.

Unmik, the UN operation administering Kosovo, introduced the European convention on human rights into Kosovan law, and expressly stated that the military and the civilian presence would be bound by its standards.

Nuala Mole, director of the Aire centre (Advice on Individual Rights in Europe), the London-based NGO which is taking the two cases to Strasbourg, said it was "shocking" that the British government was arguing that it was not bound to respect human rights in its international operations.