The Genocide Accountability Act Amends U.S. Law and Receives Great Praise All Around

By:  Lindsey Brady
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

WASHINGTON, United States - On December 21st of this year President Bush signed the Genocide Accountability Act into law after it passed through Congress with unanimous support.  The new legislation is said to overrule the Genocide Convention Implementation Act (GCIA), which previously only allowed for the prosecution of U.S. citizens who participated in genocide in foreign countries.  The Open Society Institute says the new law will fill in the gap in the GCIA by allowing the U.S. government to prosecute anyone in the United States who are believed to have committed genocide abroad even if they are no U.S. citizens.

Human Rights Watch's executive director, Kenneth Roth, stated on December 24th that "the new law will help prevent the United States from becoming a safe haven for perpetrators of genocide...its adoption sends an important signal of U.S. commitment to bring to justice those who are responsible for this most heinous crime."  Diane Orentilcher, Special Council to the Open Society Institute and a professor at American University's Washington College of Law, believes that Congress is making a great charge against the impunity that allows those who commit genocide to find sanctuary in the United States. 

Prior to this law any non-U.S. citizen accused of committing genocide outside of abroad could only be tried in the United States under the lower crime of visa fraud or be deported to their country of origin where prosecution was often unlikely or impossible.  Global Solutions states on its website that The Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 "brings U.S. law closer to the complementarity clause of the Rome Statute with similar provisions for prosecutions of genocide.  Article 6 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), coupled with the ICC's Elements of Crimes, provide a strong legal basis for investigating and prosecuting genocide...setting a high evidentiary standard that the Prosecutor must meet to prove commission of this crime."

The Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 was introduced into Senate by Richard Durbin.  It was one of three bills he had introduced that would give greater authority to the United States to prosecute those found seeking greater safety in the U.S. for the human rights abuses they have committed elsewhere.  Orentilcher, in testimony before the U.S. Senate cited an example of why this bill was necessary.  Orentilcher described the example of the notorious Serb military member, Ratko Maslenjak, who's unit was connected to the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica and according to two international courts these killings constituted genocide.  Instead of facing trial for the charge of genocide, Maslenjak was only convicted of lying about his service in the Srebrenica unit when he applied for his green card and came to the United States.

Human Rights Watch says the Justice Department is already investigating several suspects believed to have played a part in the genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia and thereafter entered the United States under fraudulent pretenses.  Under the new law these non-U.S. citizens can be prosecuted for the crime of genocide even though the crime was committed outside the United States.

For more information, please see:

Human Rights Watch - US:  New Law Extends Prosecutions for Genocide - 24 December 2007

PRNewsire-USNewsire - OSI Welcomes New Law on Genocide Prosecution - 22 December 2007

Global Solutions - Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 - 18 July 2007

H.R.2489/S.888 - Genocide Accountability Act of 2007 - Accessed 28 December 2007