News releases

Following various assertions published in the media in connection with the Khaled Nezzar case, TRIAL wishes to clarify the following: 1. TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity) is an independent, apolitical and non-confessional organisation and has consultative status before the United Nations Economic and Social Council. The main objective of TRIAL is to put th...

Bern/Geneva/Berlin, 13.09.2011 According to media reports today, Jagath Dias, a former Sri Lankan General suspected of having committed war crimes, was stripped of his diplomatic status. The Society for Threatened Peoples (STP), TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity) and ECCHR (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights) welcome this decision. However,...

Geneva/Bern, 22nd September 2011 Following a criminal complaint brought by TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity) and the Society for threatened peoples (SPM) against the Sri Lankan Deputy Ambassador to Switzerland, Jagath Dias, for war crimes, the Swiss Federal Attorney General has decided that a criminal investigation will be launched if Mr. Dias were to come...

Sarajevo/Geneva, 14 October 2011   TRIAL (Swiss Association against Impunity), seven associations of relatives of missing persons, seven associations dealing with women victims of sexual violence during the war and four associations dealing with former concentration-camp detainees submit a follow-up report to the United Nations Committee against Torture (CA...

Geneva, 6 July 2011 Impunity still exists in the Mount Elgon district in Western Kenya where hundreds of men were subject to enforced disappearance by the government in the context of a military operation in 2008. For the second time this year, TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity) in partnership with the local NGO Western Kenya Human Rights Watch (WKHRW) seiz...

Geneva 5 July 2011 The United Nations Committee against Torture has condemned Algeria for the death under torture of Mr. Djilali Hanafi, a 32 year old shopkeeper and father of two children who was arrested on 1 November 1998 in Mechra Sfa. Mr. Hanafi had been released on 3 November, only to die a few hours later at his home as a result of the torture inflicted upon...

TRIAL submits twenty individual cases along with a report on Kenya to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances. Today, TRIAL (Swiss association against impunity), in partnership with Western Kenyan Human Rights Watch, submitted to the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) twenty individual...

Sarajevo/Geneva, 11 May 2011 Today TRIAL and twelve organizations from BiH dealing with the subject of rape or other forms of sexual violence during the war (the Women’s Section of the Association of Concentration Camp Detainees, the Centre for Legal Assistance to Women Zenica, the Association for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims – Centre for Torture Victims, the...

ECCHR-Dossier confirms allegations against the Sri Lankan diplomat accused of committing numerous war crimes. 3 May 2011 (Berlin/Bern/Geneva). ECCHR has today published a new dossier which substantiates allegations of war crimes committed by the 57 Division of the Sri Lankan Army under the command of Jagath Dias (available at www.ecchr.eu). Jagath Dias was Major Ge...

Nairobi/Geneva, 19 April 2011.   TRIAL (Track Impunity Always) and the EPAF (Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team) act to seek redress for the victims of enforced disappearance in Kenya’s Mount Elgon District 2008 violence. Hundreds of men taken by the military during the operation Okoa Maisha (“Save Lives” in Swahili) in Mount Elgon district in Kenya rem...