Defence`s Feeds

The search procedures triggered by the disappearance of the Argentine TR 1700-class submarine ARA San Juan , which went missing on 15 November, have revealed that several air and maritime platforms in Argentina’s inventory are currently out of service, with hollowed-out budgets leading to a

Airbus has announced the appointment of the president of its Brazilian subsidiary Helibras as the head of all of the country’s operations in Brazil. The promotion of Richard Marelli was announced on 23 November. Marelli will report to Alberto Robles, who is the head of Airbus activities in

Event Four more Australian parliamentarians have resigned over dual citizenship during the past two weeks, bringing the number of resignations to nine since July. From the ruling Liberal party, Senator Stephen Parry resigned on 1 November and Representative John Alexander announced his resignation

An upgrade that enables the Boeing B-52H Stratofortress bomber to carry smart weapons internally has been declared ready for combat by the US Air Force (USAF). The USAF announced on 20 November that the first upgraded Conventional Rotary Launcher (CRL) has now been transported from Barksdale Air

BAE Systems said on 23 November that it has teamed with the UK government in offering to provide Australia with 5,000 ‘work years’ of technical design capability if the company is successful in its bid to supply the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) with next-generation frigates. BAE Systems

Event On 20 November 2017 the Belarusian security service (Kamitet Dziarzhaunay Byaspeki; KDB) confirmed that it had detained Pavlo Sharoiko, a Ukrianian journalist. Sharoiko’s employer, Ukrayinske Radio in Kiev, said he had been detained by the Belarusian KDB in Minsk on 25 October after

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced the first contract related to Saudi Arabia’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) programme on 22 November. Awarded to Lockheed Martin, the USD22.7 million contract covers “services in support of foreign military sales” of the LCS to Saudi

India is set to commission its indigenously designed, missile-tracking ocean surveillance ship (OSS) in 2018 to support the country’s classified strategic weapon and ballistic missile defence (BMD) programmes, official sources have told Jane’s . Designated VC11184 after the yard in the

The Polish Armament Inspectorate (AI) has issued two documents inviting industry to start a technical dialogue for two separate systems that would expand the current observation capabilities of the nation’s armed forces. A document published on 30 October is for an onshore

Vessels from the Royal Saudi Naval Forces’ (RSNF’s) Gulf-based Eastern Fleet have been seen in the Red Sea port of Eritrea for the first time, satellite imagery has confirmed. Two Badr-class corvettes and an Al-Jawf (Sandown)-class mine countermeasures vessel were present at Assab on 15

AT LEAST 50 people were killed and at least 38 others were wounded when a suicide bomber detonated their explosives at a mosque during morning prayers in Mubi in Nigeria's Adamawa state on 21 November, Reuters reported. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though Wilayat Gharb

AT LEAST 23 people were killed and 60 others wounded when a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) - described in reports as a truck bomb - detonated near a marketplace in a predominantly Shia Muslim and ethnic Turkmen area in the town of Tuz Khurmatu in Iraq's Salah ad Din

The US Air Force’s (USAF's) 71st Flying Training Wing has grounded its fleet of Beechcraft T-6A Texan II trainer aircraft following a series of physiological events affecting pilots. The temporary suspension of flight activities was announced by Vance Air Force Base (AFB) in Oklahoma on 20

French Wasp 58 Anti-Tank Rocket Launcher

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On 20 November, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally published her request to open a formal investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Afghanistan. This means that the Prosecutor agrees with the result of the preliminary examination showing that crimes meeting the ICC gravity threshold have been committed in Afghanistan since 2003 (the period for which the ICC has jurisdiction) and that the ICC considers that Afghanistan is either unwilling or unable to prosecute these crimes nationally. The Prosecutor also made an open request to the victims to send their statements to the Court by 31 January 2018. There is, then, a very important but short window of opportunity for victims to share their stories with the Court. On the occasion of the release of the Prosecutor’s request, AAN is publishing this question and answers dispatch focusing on the ICC and Afghanistan (1).

THE ICC IN GENERAL

1.  What is the International Criminal Court?

The ICC is an independent, permanent court established in 2002 to investigate and prosecute the following international crimes: genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

2. What are war crimes and crimes against humanity?

War crimes are certain acts that violate international rules on how armed conflict must be conducted. Crimes against humanity are serious human rights abuses committed against civilians on a widespread and systematic scale.  They are sometimes called atrocity crimes, and, unlike war crimes, they can be committed at any time, not just during armed conflict. Some examples of these crimes are torture and cruel treatment (such as abuse in detention), intentional killing of civilians, and attacks on places such as schools, hospitals and mosques. Making these actions crimes means that individuals who ordered or perpetrated them can be held criminally accountable.  They are called international crimes because they are thought to be so shocking that dealing with them should be the business of the whole world and not the state where the crimes were committed.     

3. How was the ICC established?

The Court was created by an international treaty known as the Rome Statute. It came into existence on July 1, 2002, after 60 states—the minimum number required—ratified the Statute. States that have ratified the Rome Statute (at present, 123 states have done so) are legally obligated to cooperate with the Court.

4. When did Afghanistan join the ICC?

The government of Afghanistan ratified the Rome Statute in 2003, so the ICC can investigate Rome Statute crimes committed by Afghans or on Afghanistan’s territory from May 1, 2003 onwards. The Rome Statute was adopted in the UN Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court in 1998, also with Afghan involvement. The Afghan Mujaheddin Government, officially the Islamic State of Afghanistan, sent a delegation, which was led by current Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, to thecConference. That time Abdullah Abdullah was the Deputy of Foreign Affairs Ministry.

5. Who can the ICC investigate?

The Court can investigate individuals, not states or corporations. The Rome Statute does not recognise immunity for any person, even heads of state or government officials. In other countries where the ICC has intervened there have been arrest warrants issued against presidents and high level officials such as heads of intelligence agencies, as well as the leaders of armed groups.

6. Where can the ICC investigate?

The Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a country that has signed the Rome Statute, or crimes by citizens of countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. (This means that even though the United States has not ratified the Rome Statute its citizens can be investigated for crimes committed in Afghanistan since 2003). The Court can also investigate in countries that have not ratified the Rome Statute, but this requires a UN Security Council referral. 

7. Where else has the ICC investigated?

To date, the ICC has opened ten investigations in nine countries: Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo; the Central African Republic (where two separate investigations are underway); Darfur, Sudan; Kenya; Côte d’Ivoire; Libya; Mali; and Georgia.

8. What triggers an investigation by the Court?

There are three ways that the ICC gets involved. First, a country that has ratified the Rome Statute can refer a situation for investigation; secondly, the UN Security Council can refer a situation (as it has done in Libya and Sudan); thirdly, the Prosecutor can seek to initiate an investigation in countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. This is what has happened in Afghanistan.

9. What is the ICC’s relationship to national courts?

The ICC operates according to the principle of complementarity, which recognises that states have the main responsibility to investigate and prosecute crimes committed in their territories or by their nationals. This means that the Court can only investigate when a state is not already investigating or prosecuting the same individual in a similar case, or is unable or unwilling to do so.

10. How does the ICC enforce its decisions?

The Court does not have its own police force; it relies on state cooperation to enforce arrest warrants and comply with rulings. Other countries that are members of the Court also have a duty to cooperate – including enforcing arrest warrants.

11. How long has the ICC been involved in Afghanistan?

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC started a preliminary examination in Afghanistan at least as long ago as 2006, when it was made public. A preliminary examination comes before a formal investigation and allows the prosecutor to decide if the suspected crimes fit its mandate. The examination also includes assessing whether the national government is doing enough to investigate and prosecute domestically.

THE ICC’s INVESTIGATION IN AFGHANISTAN 

12. What was the result of the ICC Preliminary Examination into the Situation in Afghanistan?

The preliminary examination into crimes committed in Afghanistan lasted almost a decade. The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) released its 2016 Preliminary Examination Report on Afghanistan (released annually) on 14 November 2016. The report stated that the OTP had determined that there was a reasonable basis to believe that, at a minimum, the following crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction had occurred:

• Crimes against humanity and war crimes by the Taleban and their affiliate, the Haqqani Network
• War crimes of torture and related ill-treatment by Afghan government forces, in particular the intelligence agency (National Directorate for Security) and the Afghan National Police;
• War crimes of torture and related ill-treatment, by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan and in secret detention facilities operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, principally in the 2003-2004 period, although allegedly continuing in some cases until 2014.

The Preliminary Examination also said that thresholds of admissibility had been reached, ie the alleged crimes under ICC jurisdiction are sufficiently grave, are not being addressed by domestic or other legal bodies (although this is “subject to further information that could be provided by the relevant national authorities in the course of the preliminary examination or any subsequent investigation”) and there are “no substantial reasons to believe that the opening of an investigation would not be in the interests of justice.”

The Preliminary Examination was initiated by the ICC Prosecutor and not requested by Afghanistan or the United Nations Security Council, which means under the Court’s rules that, once the Prosecutor has determined that there is a case or cases to answer, there has to be an additional, preliminary judgement by a panel of judges from the Pre-Trial Chamber. The judges will review the Prosecutor’s request, as well as all the supporting evidence, to ensure that an investigation is merited.

13. What has the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor done about the situation in Afghanistan based on the Preliminary Examination?

On 30 October 2017 the ICC Prosecutor notified the Presidency of the ICC of her readiness to submit her request to the Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC seeking judicial authorisation to commence an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. On 3 November 2017, the Prosecutor announced that she was submitting her request to the Pre-Trial Chamber. On the same day the Presidency established the Pre-Trial Chamber III to deal with the Prosecutor’s request concerning the situation in Afghanistan.

On 20 November, the Prosecutor announced that she had submitted her request, seeking authorisation to commence a full investigation into the situation in Afghanistan, to the Pre-Trial Chamber III of the Court. According to this lengthy, 181-page request, all legal criteria for commencement of an investigation exist (AAN’s analysis about these legal criteria and the OTP’s arguments concerning them: see here).

On the same day, 20 November, the Prosecutor also released a notification on the ICC website where she said:

By this notice, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, informs victims of alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan in the period of alleged crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan in the period since 1 May 2003, as well as victims of other alleged crimes that have a nexus to the armed conflict in Afghanistan and were committed on the territory of other States Parties in the period since 1 July 2002, […].

The Prosecutor’s notice to victims follows an order issued by the three judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber on 9 November 2017 concerning the issue of victims’ representations. According to this order, war victims “may” submit their representations to the Registry of the ICC until 31 of January 2018. For this purpose, the Registry of the ICC developed special forms in local languages, namely Dari and Pashto, as well as English – although victims can use any format and languages they are comfortable with. The victims can also send their messages to the ICC as audio and video files. The Prosecutor was obliged in the order to notify the victims known to her via public notice by general means. Victims’ engagement with the ICC is voluntary and they are not obliged to prove their claims. The victims can submit their representation individually or collectively.

14. What happens now? What will an investigation in Afghanistan entail?

The prosecutor has now asked the judges (the “pre-trial chamber”) for authorization to open an investigation. The judges will consider the material gathered by the prosecutor, but will also invite victims to tell the judges what happened to them and whether they want the ICC to investigate. This is an important but very short window for victims to be heard; it lasts from now until January 31, 2018 (See 16 below).

A decision from the judges or the pre-trial chamber can be expected within three to six months. If permission to investigate is granted, the real investigation begins thereafter. When the real investigation starts, the Prosecutor and her team have much more power to gather information.

15. Who are likely to be investigated by the ICC in Afghanistan?

Three main groups have been identified by the Prosecutor:

–       the Taleban and affiliated armed groups

–       Afghan government forces

–       the United States military and Central Intelligence Agency

According to information received by the OTP thus far, over 17,000 civilian deaths between January 2007 and December 2015 could be attributed to anti-government armed groups such as the Taleban. The report also highlights attacks by the Taleban against schools, hospitals, mosques and humanitarian organisations (which are “protected objects” under international law). In the case of criminal conduct by US forces and Afghan government forces, grave abuses against conflict-related detainees appear to be the main focus.

16. Can the ICC investigate crimes committed by US forces if the US is not a party to the Rome Statute?

Although the United States is not itself a member of the ICC, because alleged crimes took place by US nationals on the territory of Afghanistan, the Court is legally able to assert jurisdiction over them from May 1, 2003 onwards. Furthermore, the Court has jurisdiction over all international crimes in other countries that are members of the Court where so-called US “black sites” operated, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators (this includes Afghanistan, but also countries like Poland, Romania, Lithuania where detainees were taken for interrogation). 

17. What role can victims play in the Court’s work?

There are three main areas of involvement:

(1) Victim Representations: when the judges/chambers are deciding whether to accept the Prosecutors’ request to investigate (see 14), they may ask for the opinions of victims.

(2) Victim Participation: Once charges are filed against specific individuals (see 15), victims can apply to be recognised by the Court and will then be represented by a lawyer who can participate on their behalf at relevant stages of the proceedings. The Court will also try to keep victims informed about the status of proceedings.

(3) Reparations: If an accused is convicted, victims can receive reparations. It has already ordered reparations for victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mali, but this requires that an individual first be convicted for his or her crimes. The ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims (TFV) implements Court-ordered reparations; it also has the authority to provide physical, psychological, and material support to victims and their families in situations where the Court is investigating.

18. What role can civil society play in the Court’s work?

During investigations, the Prosecutor sometimes asks local civil society organisations that have information about the alleged crimes to help lead them to sources of evidence such as witnesses. Sometimes they seek to make formal arrangements with people they call ‘intermediaries’.  Civil society should talk to lawyers or groups who work on these kinds of investigations to fully understand the consequences of giving such information later on if it is used in a trial. For example, any information given to the Prosecutor might have to be revealed to the defence in the case.

19. Is information provided by victims to the ICC confidential?

Information provided to judges by victims about whether they want an investigation to open is not made public. Information provided to the Prosecutor when the investigation starts is not made public, although defence lawyers can ask for such information. The Court has significant discretion regarding how much information it needs to share with anyone at this stage. Victims should talk to lawyers or groups who work on these kinds of investigations to fully understand their rights and potential risks before talking to the Court.

20. Can other countries stop the Court if they don’t want this investigation?

The only way that countries can legally stop an investigation is to ask the UN Security Council to defer an investigation, for a renewable period of 12 months. This is not easy: it requires a majority of the Security Council’s vote (9+ out of 15), and no vetoes from any of the permanent member states (US, UK, Russia, China, France). It is noteworthy that the US has not joined the Court but if warrants are issued for American citizens, then they can be arrested if they travel to countries that are ICC members.

Because of the principle of complementarity (see The ICC in General, 9, above), states that are themselves in a position to prosecute these crimes will have the opportunity at different stages to argue that the ICC should stop its actions because they are already investigating the same crimes themselves.

21. What has been the effect of ICC investigations in other countries?

It’s important to see the ICC as having two roles: one being the investigations and trials themselves, the other being the impact the Court can have on domestic prosecutions. A good outcome is accelerating and expanding domestic accountability by, for instance, passing domestic legislation that criminalises international crimes, prosecuting accused individuals before national courts, upgrading domestic court systems to vigorously prosecute such crimes, and passing domestic legislation that improves the means by which to do so (such as improving witness protection programs). So far, ICC examinations and investigations in other countries have led to some prosecutions by local or national courts, as in Uganda, Colombia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Moreover, although some commentators express concern that the ICC’s involvement can complicate conflict situations, others have argued that the Court has actually helped support peace negotiations in countries emerging from conflict, like Uganda and Colombia, by ensuring that accountability is part of the countries’ post-conflict agreement.

 

 

(1) The first version of this Questions and Answers document was prepared by the Open Society Justice Initiative for a seminar series. OSJI kindly offered the document to AAN for publication and AAN’s Ehsan Qaane has completed it with information about the Prosecutor’s request. For in-depth information about the ICC in Afghanistan, see AAN’s previous publications here, here and here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Many Afghan migrants have been opting to travel through Bulgaria, a country bordering Turkey, on their journey to western and northern Europe. This route, while safer than a sea crossing, comes with its own terrifying experiences, as first-hand testimonies of migrants collected by different human rights organisations have shown. In Bulgaria, Afghan migrants are not only in danger of being attacked by vigilante groups or push back to Turkey, as the reports have shown, but they are also more likely to receive unfair treatment at the hands of the national migration authorities, AAN’s Jelena Bjelica discovered on a recent visit to the Bulgarian capital, Sofia. She also found that many of them eventually end up being returned to Afghanistan by force or under pressure.

Afghans in Bulgaria

Bulgaria, an EU member-country at the southern border of the Union, has seen an unprecedented movement of migrants between its own south-eastern border with Turkey and its western border with Serbia, since 2015. According to a joint annual border monitoring report by the UNHCR, Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and the Bulgarian General Border Police Directorate with the Ministry of Interior, the police detained a total of 34,056 irregular migrants (the majority of whom were Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis) who were attempting to cross the Bulgarian border illegally in 2015. Of these, 26,939 had submitted applications for international protection to the border or immigration police (see here). The country remained the preferred land route for refugees after the closure of what was dubbed the Balkan humanitarian corridor in early 2016, which stretched between Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary and later extended to Croatia (see this AAN analysis).

Afghans in particular favour the route through Bulgaria. In 2016 they made up over half of the 18,884 migrants apprehended there. These numbers were in fact lower in 2016 than in 2015 as the number of refugees arriving in Europe had decreased that year (see this AAN analysis).

Testimonies from Afghans collected by numerous media (see here, here and here) and the human rights organisations (see the Human Rights Watch report here and the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights report here, as well as the Are You Syrious report here) reveal that most of them experienced humiliation, maltreatment and abuse by the Bulgarian authorities. This includes police extortion and robbery; ‘push-backs’ to Turkey (the most frequent expulsion method allegedly applied by the Bulgarian police authorities was forcibly returning migrants picked up near the Turkish border, while ensuring that a Turkish border patrol would take them further into Turkish territory; see here), indefinite detention in spite of official requests for asylum, a lack of access to legal aid and a low rate of accepted asylum applications. Afghans and others also experienced attacks by private, government-tolerated vigilante groups (see also this AAN analysis).

Asylum claims and ‘punitive detentions’

Afghan claims for asylum in Bulgaria have often been rejected without fair consideration and applicants have often been persuaded to give up their claims and return to Afghanistan, lawyers from three different legal aid organisations in Bulgaria pointed out to AAN. This has resulted in a situation whereby Afghans make up the biggest number of asylum seekers in Bulgaria, while their recognition rate is negligible. (1) The rate is also one of the lowest in the EU (only 2,5 per cent in 2016, compared to an EU average of 56 per cent).

Afghans, instead, are put into detention centres (2) and often pressurised into returning home. This practice of ‘punitive detention’ dates back to the riots in the Harmanli camp near the Bulgarian-Turkish border in late 2016. Harmanli made Bulgarian and international headlines in November 2017, when Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said they had arrested some 300 Afghan migrants after they had protested against poor living conditions in the camp and clashed with the police. Iliana Savova from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee told AAN that the riots had been a turning point in Bulgaria’s public opinion and consequently its treatment of Afghans. Since then, she said, Afghans have been detained more frequently than other nationalities and kept in detention for longer periods of time. “There is a general assumption in Bulgaria that Afghans are not eligible for asylum status,” she concluded.

This unfavourable treatment is even evident in the latest statistics released by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior. By 31 October 2017, the ministry reported a total of 2,678 third-country nationals detained so far this year. Of this number, 39,3 per cent were Afghans, making them the top nationality among all foreign nationals detained. (Many of the Afghans detained have been returned by force or voluntarily to Afghanistan; more on this below.)

Diana Daskalova, a lawyer from the Centre for Legal Aid – Voice in Bulgaria, one of the two small organisations that work inside the detention centres (the second one is the Foundation for Access to Rights), pointed out to AAN that many violations take place in those facilities. She said that migrants often do not receive sufficient information about their rights in the asylum process (which partly has to do with the fact that the non-governmental organisations are too small to cover all the applicants) and that migrants are often subjected to “systematic psychological pressure,” which eventually makes them consent to returning to their home country. Even after they register an asylum claim, Daskalova says, Afghans are not usually moved to open centres as they are in many other European countries, but instead are kept in detention.

Bulgaria amended its national asylum law to introduce the detention of asylum seekers on 1 January 2016. Until then, Bulgarian legislation had not formally envisaged the detention of asylum seekers. In practice, however, they had been frequently detained as irregular immigrants (see this EU migration law blog by Valeria Ilareva, the head of the Foundation for Access to Rights). Ilareva pointed out that with regard to asylum seekers, however, neither the EU legal framework, nor Bulgarian national law, “provide for an exact time limit of the length of detention,” but that under the EU Return Directive 2008/115/EC, “a maximum time limit of detention of 18 months, which has also been adopted in Bulgarian law” is stipulated. She further explained how the system in Bulgaria works:

[…] Under the amendments in the asylum legislation, the competent authority for issuing detention orders for asylum seekers is the head of the State Agency for Refugees (or an official authorized by him), who is also the decision-making body on the applications for international protection in the country. […]

Usually, asylum seekers who have entered the country irregularly are immediately issued a removal order and detained for the purpose of its execution. It is against this background that asylum seekers make their applications for international protection, often from within the detention centre for irregular immigrants. Their asylum application is forwarded to the State Agency for Refugees, which is the competent institution to register the third country nationals as asylum seekers and accommodate them in the reception centres for asylum seekers. For the latter there is no time limit in national law, which makes access to the asylum procedure arbitrary: registration as asylum seeker might take from several days to several months (if the asylum seekers’ removal order has not been carried out in the meantime). By national law, upon registration as asylum seeker, the implementation of one’s removal order is suspended until a final negative decision on the asylum application enters into force. (3)

The State Refugee Agency’s (SAR) asylum decisions can be appealed in court, lawyers in Bulgaria say. The SAR decisions are based on their own country of origin’s situation reports, which are not public documents. (4)

The unfair treatment of Afghan nationals by the Bulgarian authorities was also highlighted in a recently leaked letter sent by the European Commission to the Bulgarian State Agency for Refugees and the Ministry of Interior in July 2017, as the online publication Balkan Insight reported. The letter sent by the director of the Commission’s Migration and Protection Directorate, Laurent Muschel, on 6 July 2017, noted that Bulgaria’s recognition rate of Afghan nationals is “strikingly low compared to the rate of recognition (granting of international protection status) for the same nationality in other EU countries.”

The letter also confirms:

Particular concerns have also been expressed by stakeholders about the fact that Afghan nationals are apparently often detained for lengthy periods and to a considerably greater extent than occurs for other nationalities.

Even though Bulgaria is under increased political pressure from its European counterparts to improve its treatment of migrants, and in particular Afghans, only 356 Afghans are currently housed in reception centres in the country (the figures, as of 19 October 2017, provided by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee).

Police extortion and push-backs

The European border agency, Frontex, reinforced its presence in Bulgaria in August 2016, but push-backs – prohibited by international refugee and human rights law, ie the non-refoulement principle ­(5) – are still happening to Turkey, a worker with an international organisation in Bulgaria told AAN. The level of the police violence in 2017, which has been well documented in the past, however, has seen a decrease. (6)

Bulgaria’s track record of police abuse since 2015 has been well documented. Reports by Human Rights Watch and the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights put forward detailed accounts supported by first-hand testimonies. (7)

During its research trip to Belgrade in June 2016, AAN also documented the stories of Afghans who came through Bulgaria and experienced police brutality. A young Afghan who had travelled from Teheran told AAN:

When we got into Bulgaria we had to walk for three nights and four days. We were with 30 Afghans. There were families and also an old man and an old woman. Some boys had to carry the old woman. In Bulgaria the police got us. A car was supposed to pick us up and bring us to Sofia. [The smugglers] said it would take one hour, but in the end we had to sleep in the forest. There the Bulgarian police found us. They brought us back to the Turkish border at around midnight. We tried to make a fire, but it was raining. The police had taken all our food and money, and they beat us before they released us. It rained till morning.

Bulgarian police brutality has even been documented in an art project, run by the prestigious Belgrade-based Centre for Cultural Decontamination. Ahmad Favad, from Afghanistan and currently in Belgrade, related his story:

The mobile phone that I took on my journey to Europe was a memento from my brother. When I left for Iran I took some clothes and his iPhone. He once told me that he would let me keep it when he leaves for Sweden. He didn’t succeed, death stopped him. […] I passed Iran and Turkey and managed to keep my phone. However, in Bulgaria at the border with Turkey we got caught by police. They took all our money and everything they could find. I told the police officer, I explained to him that I would give him the money and anything he wanted, I begged him to return my phone… They didn’t want to. They didn’t give me back my brother’s phone. […] Whenever I remember that I didn’t succeed to keep it safe, I feel guilty.

Threats from the vigilante groups and skinheads

Apart from government authorities, refugees coming to Bulgaria – including Afghans – face violence from private vigilante groups. A video posted online by one of these groups, the Organisation for the Protection of Bulgarian Citizens (OPBC) show a man who ties the hands of three Afghan men behind their backs and forces them to lie on the ground, while he shouts “No Bulgaria. Go back to Turkey”. The video made headlines in early 2016 and sparked a debate in Bulgaria and beyond about the existence of such groups (see here, here and here).

In Bulgaria, however, the tone of the debate was far less critical than in the other parts of the world. German public external broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) reported in April 2016 that the country’s prime minister, Boiko Borisov, publicly praised the vigilantes and suggested that the protection of the country’s southern border should be a group effort. DW also quoted a public opinion poll from 2016, which found that eighty-four per cent of Bulgarians supported the vigilantes’ actions, with just 16 per cent opposed to them. Borisov, the Economist later reported, after the release of the OPBC video, condemned the practice of ‘citizen arrests’ and warned that anyone who carried them out would be prosecuted.

Following Borisov’s statement, Petar Nizamov, the man who posted the videos on behalf of OPCB, was detained by the police and placed under house arrest. But he resurfaced again in early 2017 when he announced, according to some media accounts, that he had bought an old Russian helicopter to continue his hunt. Nizamov was officially acquitted by the court of charges in connection with the alleged illegal detention of three Afghan migrants close to the Turkish border in August 2017. Nizamov’s group is not the only one operating along the border area.

While these groups continue to pose a serious threat to migrants trying to cross the Turkish–Bulgarian border, in the capital Sofia skinhead groups intimidate them. An Afghan from Kabul currently residing in the Voina Rampa reception centre in Sofia (there are three open centres in the capital and Afghans are mainly housed in the Voina Rampa), told AAN that one of his friends was recently beaten by the skinheads near a bus station, some 100 meters from the centre. He explained that his friend reported the incident, but “the police did nothing,” he said.

Returns to Afghanistan

The Bulgarian authorities’ approach, as explained above, results in a high rate of returns to Afghanistan. Biljana Stankovic, general coordinator for Médecins Du Monde (MdM) in Bulgaria explained to AAN how migrants, and in particular Afghans, are manipulated into returning home. She said that besides this, they do not have access to correct information, there are often no translators available, and refugees are kept under constant pressure of expulsion even after they have submitted an asylum claim. “For example, the way they are treating unaccompanied minors is telling of practices in Bulgaria,” she said, adding that minors are often forced to sign documents they cannot read or understand. “Whether there are any voluntary returns, is questionable,” she alleged.

According to the Bulgarian MoI’s official figures, over 690 Afghans – or 39,1 per cent of a total of 1,771 third-country nationals had been returned to their country by the end of October 2017 since the beginning of the year. This number includes those that were forced back (441 foreigners); (8) those with imposed coercive administrative measures who voluntarily left the country with their own funds (343 foreigners); those who returned with the assistance of the Migration Directorate in the implementation of programmes for assisted voluntary returns (800 foreigners); those without forced coercive administrative measures who left the country voluntarily (46 foreigners); and those have been surrendered to other EU Member States when performing readmission procedures under Regulation 604/2013 EC, ie the Dublin Regulation (141 third-country nationals). (The Bulgarian MoI does not offer the breakdown by nationality for each of category, so there are no figures for Afghans in each category).

According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) dataset, 404 Afghans returned to Afghanistan from Bulgaria between 1 January and mid-August 2017 through the organisation’s Assisted Voluntary Return programme. But, as AAN previously reported, there is little they can hope for in Afghanistan. Services available to those returning are patchy.

Daskalova, from the Centre for Legal Aid, and MDM’s Stankovic said to AAN that the number of returns has increased over the past couple of years. This is confirmed by the IOM’s data on voluntary returns from Bulgaria. While in 2015 only 16 Afghans returned voluntarily from this country, their number increased to 276 in 2016, and to over 400 in 2017.

Bulgaria: A grim outlook for Afghans

While the evidence suggests that Afghans would be better off avoiding Bulgaria, the lack of other travel options dictates the reality of their journey. The fact is that the number of land routes to western and northern Europe has been reduced to the one that goes through Bulgaria following the closure of the Balkan humanitarian corridor in March 2016. Many Afghans who are stuck in Turkey or Greece and still harbour plans of making it through are instinctively discouraged by the dangers that comes with a sea journey from Greece to Italy so they do not even consider this a viable option (see also AAN’s analysis). They have no other way open to them, other than transiting through Bulgaria in the hope of reaching Serbia. Yet while the treatment of migrants in the reception centres is somewhat better there, their prospects of getting international protection status are almost non-existent (see these previous AAN analyses here and here).

It can only be hoped that increased political pressure from the European Union, as the European Commission letter quoted above, will make the situation for Afghans in Bulgaria more bearable.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Sari Kouvo

 

(1) Statistics from the website of the State Agency for Refugees show that Afghans lead the number of submitted asylum claims. Afghans made 1,002 claims since the beginning of the year until end of September 2017 and were granted asylum in the same period (breakdown by month): January 2017 – 0; February 2017 – 0; March 2017 – 5 refugee statuses; April 2017 – ­5 refugee statuses; May 2017 – 6 refugee statuses; June 2017 – 7 refugee statuses; July 2017 – 7 refugee statuses; 1 humanitarian status; August 2017 – 13 refugee statuses; 2 humanitarian statuses; September 2017 – 14 refugee statuses; 2 humanitarian statuses.

In fact, the SAR’s statistics show that Afghans submitted by far the highest number of asylum applications between January 1993 — when the agency started collecting statistical track records — and 31 October 2017. Afghans made some 25,166 asylum claims during this period, followed by Syrians (21,041 claims); Iraqis (19,365 claims) and Pakistanis (3,023 claims).

(2) There are three centres in Bulgaria: Bousmantsi in Sofia, Lyubimets and Elhovo.  The Foundation for Access to Rights’ studies about the Bulgarian detention system available here; here and here.

(3) Daskalova, from the Centre for Legal Aid – Voice in Bulgaria, in an email exchange with the author [dated 22 November 2017] explained that according to recent changes in the Bulgarian Law on Refugees the SAR has a three days deadline for the registration of submitted asylum claims, and six days if the claim has been submitted through a different authority such as a detentions centre. “Another question is whether these provisions are implemented by the authorities,” she added.

(4) All three Bulgarian lawyers told AAN that even after the deadly Kabul bomb attack on 31 May 2017, which left over 90 dead and over 500 injured and caused major infrastructure damage, including to the Bulgarian Embassy in Kabul, (see AAN analyses here and here) nothing has changed in the treatment towards Afghans and pressure has continued as have returns, both forced and ‘voluntary’, to Afghanistan.

(5) The non-refoulement principle laid down in Art. 33, para 1 of the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 stipulates that no Contracting State shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his/her life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

(6) A researcher with an international organisation, however, hinted that there is a “strange overlap between police and criminal groups.” This was also confirmed by Iliana Savova, the director of the legal protection of refugees and migrants programme of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, who told AAN that the police in Bulgaria is, in fact, facilitating the smuggling of migrants. Yet the high number of pushbacks could also indicate that there is a financial link between the police and the smuggling groups, as migrants are forced to pay more money each time they try to cross the border.

(7) The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee also reported in 2015 that “various groups of asylum-seekers reported throughout the year that the Bulgarian border police including the mixed patrols deployed for state border protection pushed them back into the Turkish territory not only from the border line but also from inland borderareas (a border zone is considered to be the zone 30 km from the border line).”

(8) The Bulgarian MoI monthly report does not specify what exactly is meant by ‘forced back’. Daskalova, from the Centre for Legal Aid – Voice in Bulgaria, in an email exchange with the author explained that “forced [back] returns are deportations on budget from the Ministry of Interior.” “The rest [other categories listed by the MoI] are at the expense of IOM or [the migrants’] own expense,” she wrote, adding that those “without deportation orders are people in situations when still no administrative measures have been imposed and they have taken action to return, notifying the migration [authority].”

In should be also noted that the Afghan embassy in Bulgaria does not issue travel documents to persons who refuse to return voluntarily. (For more details see this study).

 

The European Defence Agency (EDA) was created in July 2004 in the context of the drafting of the first European Security Strategy. In recent years, developments have triggered talks on the future of the EDA. In the context of the most recent CSDP innovations (EU Global Strategy, EDF, PESCO, CARD) this workshop will discuss the possible role of the Agency in framing a common Union defence policy and in defining a European capabilities and armaments policy.
Location : Paul-Henri Spaak 5B001
Further information
Draft programme
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 22 November, the Subcommittee will consider the draft opinion establishing the European Defence Industrial Development Programme aiming at supporting the competitiveness and innovative capacity of the EU defence industry by Ioan Mircea PASCU (S&D).
Further information
Draft agenda and meeting documents
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The European Defence Agency’s second Helicopter Composite Air Operations (COMAO) planning course was successfully completed last week at RAF airbase Linton-on-Ouse, United Kingdom. The course is part of the EDA’s multifaceted helicopter training activities which aim to provide Member States with a framework to develop, consolidate and share best practices in order to meet the challenges of flying helicopters in a modern operational environment.

Sixteen trainees from Belgium, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the UK took part in the second COMAO course, the objective of which was to increase interoperability and the common understanding of complex mission planning in a multinational environment. The course involved support and attack helicopters but also fast-jet, intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) as well as air transport and ground force units.

The course started with a theoretical part, including detailed briefs on COMAO, 4Ts (Task, Target, Threat and Tactics) mission planning as well as standard rotary tactics employed to counter a range of different threats. Participants also examined the Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) of the attack helicopters and fast-jet capabilities in both the Blue and Red Air role delivered by 100 Sqn RAF.

The second part of the course was devoted to the practical mission planning for a multinational joint helicopter force (and its support assets) which had to operate in a given and constantly evolving political and military scenario. As the course went by and the complexity of the missions increased, trainees became increasingly familiar with the planning processes and the crews’ performances improved considerably, even under worsening mission conditions and mounting time pressure.

The course level was gradually elevated to a point where the individual trainees had to prepare their missions on their own. The findings of the lessons learnt session which concluded the course will be used for preparing the next EDA COMAO planning course scheduled for 2018.

 

More information:

• Helicopter Initiatives (EDA project page)