Published: 02 October 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
Throughout the year, Germany makes numerous statements on international law. Not all these statements form part of a case study presented on GPIL. However, these statements may nevertheless be of interest to international lawyers. We therefore compile these statements on a monthly basis. (more…)
Published: 24 September 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
Over the years, there have been a number of heated debates on the Middle East conflict at the United Nations. However, the exchange in the Security Council on 23 July 2019 between the Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, Ambassador Christoph Heusgen, and the Assistant to the U.S. President and Special Representative for International Negotiations, Jason D. Greenblatt, should be remembered not just for the two countries’ different approaches to the Middle East peace process, but also, and more importantly, for their different outlooks on international law. (more…)
Published: 21 September 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
The debate about the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s announcement in the House of Commons on 8 September 2020 that the UK Internal Market Bill would “break international law in a very specific and limited way” has unearthed some notable examples of breaches of international law by other States. One little known such breach concerned Germany’s disregard for the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund (the IMF Treaty) and the so-called “Smithsonian Agreement” in March 1973. The breach was admitted in a private meeting only in 1978 and became known to the general public only some 30 years later when the transcript of the meeting was declassified. (more…)
Published: 27 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
Throughout the year, Germany makes numerous statements on international law. Not all these statements form part of a case study presented on GPIL. However, these statements may nevertheless be of interest to international lawyers. We therefore compile these statements on a monthly basis. (more…)
Published: 23 July 2020 Authors: Mirjam Reiter and Stefan Talmon
Dr. Moncef Kartas, a Tunisian-German dual national, had been a member and arms expert of the United Nations Panel of Experts on Libya since May 2016. The Panel had been established pursuant to Security Council resolution 1973 (2011) to investigate allegations of violations of the arms embargo and other sanctions imposed on Libya. On 26 March 2019, shortly before the Panel was to submit an interim report to the Security Council, Dr. Kartas was arrested on espionage charges upon arrival in Tunis. He was accused of gathering intelligence information concerning national security through interference, interception and audio surveillance and disclosing that information to foreign governments. It was argued, in particular, that he possessed special radio devices used to track civil and military aviation, the use of which required official authorisation in Tunisia. (more…)
Published: 20 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to the late 1980s, when the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic started to make territorial claims against its fellow Soviet Socialist Republic. The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, with its capital, Stepanakert, was part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, but its population was approximately 75 per cent ethnic Armenian (145,000) and 25 per cent ethnic Azeri (40,688). Inter-ethnic violence broke out in early February 1988 after calls for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. In July 1988, the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) rejected Armenian demands for unification. In January 1989, the USSR Government placed Nagorno-Karabakh under Moscow’s direct rule, but this did not end the clashes between Armenians and Azeris. During the disintegration of the USSR, Azerbaijan declared its independence on 18 October 1991. A month later, the Azerbaijani parliament in Baku annulled Nagorno-Karabakh’s status of autonomous oblast. (more…)
Published: 14 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
Over the last few years, German-Russian relations have not been at their best. For example, in April/May 2015, the German Federal Parliament experienced a serious cyberattack during which 16 gigabytes of data, confidential documents and e-mails were stolen. The attack also affected the parliamentary office of Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Federal Prosecutor General launched an investigation on suspicion of espionage against Germany on behalf of the intelligence service of a foreign power which on 29 April 2020 led the Investigating Magistrate of the Federal Court of Justice to issue an international arrest warrant for Russian national Dimitri Badin. There was credible evidence that the accused was working for the Russian military intelligence service GRU at the time of the cyberattack. During parliamentary question time on 13 May 2020, Chancellor Merkel implicated Russia in this “outrageous” cyberattack and accused the country of pursuing a “strategy of hybrid warfare, which includes warfare in connection with cyber disorientation and distortion of facts.” (more…)
Published: 09 July 2020 Authors: Stefan Talmon and Mary Lobo
In the wake of the Euromaidan revolution in Ukraine in February 2014, the Russian Federation annexed the Crimean peninsula in March of the same year and tensions between pro-Russian groups in the Eastern Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk (also spelled Luhansk) and the central government in Kiev developed into an outright armed conflict. In April 2014, these groups established the so-called “Lugansk People’s Republic” (LPR) and “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DPR) which, in May of the same year, declared their independence from Ukraine. The declarations of independence, however, were not recognised either by Germany or the international community of States more generally. On 5 September 2014, the Ukrainian Government and the pro-Russian separatists signed a 12-point Protocol in the Belorussian capital Minsk (“Minsk Protocol”) which provided, inter alia, for an immediate ceasefire and the decentralization of power in Ukraine by means of enacting a Law of Ukraine “On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions”. The Law provided for a special status for the two regions but recognized them as an integral part of Ukraine. By January 2015, however, the Minsk Protocol ceasefire had completely collapsed and renewed heavy fighting resumed. (more…)
Published: 06 July 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
Throughout the year, Germany makes numerous statements on international law. Not all these statements form part of a case study presented on GPIL. However, these statements may nevertheless be of interest to international lawyers. We therefore compile these statements on a monthly basis. (more…)
Published: 25 June 2020 Author: Stefan Talmon
On 5 July 2019, the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart sentenced the German national Sabine Ulrike Sch. to five years in prison for, inter alia, war crimes against property. Sabine Ulrike Sch. left Germany in December 2013 to join the foreign terrorist organisation “Islamic State” (IS). She travelled to Syria, where she married a higher-ranking IS fighter she had not previously known in a ceremony performed in accordance with Islamic rites. In March 2014, she moved with her husband into a house in Manbij which had been seized by IS after the rightful occupants had fled, and which was under the control of IS. When the two moved into the house in Manbij they were provided with new household appliances, which came from a factory plundered by IS. In June or July 2014, they then moved into a furnished flat in the centre of Raqqa. This property had also been seized by IS after the rightful occupants had been expelled, or they had fled from the organisation. After her husband was killed in fighting in early December 2016, she was to be married again. In September 2017, Sabine Ulrike Sch. was captured by Kurdish forces along with the wives of other IS fighters. She returned to Germany in April 2018 and was arrested on 26 April 2018. (more…)