DUBLIN – Ireland announced legal action on Wednesday against the UK government in the European Court of Human Rights over a law granting immunity to combatants in the Northern Ireland conflict.

The contentious legislation, passed by the UK parliament in September, creates a truth and recovery commission offering amnesty to British security personnel and paramilitaries if they cooperate with its enquiries.

It has been condemned by families of those who died during the three decades of violence over British rule in Northern Ireland, known as “the Troubles”, that began in the late 1960s.

All Northern Irish political parties and the Irish government in Dublin oppose the legislation, while Europe’s leading rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, has also expressed “serious concerns”.

Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin said Ireland had consistently argued the legislation is “not compatible” with Britain’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

“The decision by the British government… (to) pursue legislation unilaterally, without effective engagement with the legitimate concerns that we, and many others, raised left us with few options,” he said.

“The British government removed the political option, and has left us only this legal avenue.”

Martin added he had “used every opportunity to make my concerns known” and urged London to pause the legislation.

Taoiseach (prime minister) Leo Varadkar told reporters in Dublin that the court would be asked to carry out a judicial review of the legislation.

“We informed the British government of that this morning.”

– Contentious –

Ireland will pursue the case in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which oversees the ECHR and is recognised by 46 states including Britain and Ireland.

Martin noted incorporating the convention into Northern Ireland law was a “specific and fundamental requirement” of the 1998 Good Friday peace accords.

That largely ended the Troubles, which saw more than 3,500 people killed.

Around 1,200 deaths from that time remain under investigation, according to the UK government.

Its law — formally called the UK Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 — has been welcomed by groups representing British veterans from the period.

They argue former soldiers have been subjected to unfair prosecutions.

Last year British soldier David Holden received a three-year suspended sentence for killing a man at a checkpoint in 1988, shooting him in the back.

Last week, a judge in Northern Ireland said “Soldier F” — the only British soldier charged over the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings of 13 civilians — would stand trial for murder.

But Ireland’s legal action will likely prove contentious in Britain, where the ECHR is increasingly attacked by right-wing elements within the ruling Conservatives.

They want Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to withdraw the country from the convention over protections it offers to refugees and asylum-seekers arriving in the UK.

The UK government’s Northern Ireland Office said it “profoundly regrets” the Irish government’s decision to “bring this unnecessary case against the UK”.

“The decision comes at a particularly sensitive time in Northern Ireland,” Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said in a statement.

“It did not need to be taken now, given the issues are already before the UK courts.”

Heaton-Harris said the UK government would “continue robustly” to defend the legislation.

“The overriding purpose of the Legacy Act is to enable more victims and survivors to obtain more information faster than can be achieved under current legacy mechanisms,” he said.

“We cannot afford further delay in the provision of effective legacy outcomes — both for families and wider society.”

BAMAKO – Separatist Tuareg forces on Wednesday announced they had set up a blockade on the major roads in northern Mali, where the army has made inroads in recent weeks.

The Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP), an alliance of rebel forces, said it had decided to set up roadblocks across all roads leading to northern borders with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger.

It would cover roads leading out of the cities of Menaka, Kidal, Gao, Timbuktu and Taoudeni, said the CSP statement.

This blockade would cover all products and all means of transport, the statement added.

The mainly Tuareg rebel forces have in recent weeks lost ground to a Malian army offensive that in mid-November led to their recapture of the northeast city of Kidal.

Fighting between the separatists and government troops broke again in August after eight years of calm, as both sides scrambled to fill the vacuum left by the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers.

The MINUSMA force packed up and left at the behest of Mali’s military rulers in Bamako, where the colonels seized power in 2020.

It was the army’s air power, including planes and drones, that helped make its recent gains against the rebel forces.

Mali’s army was also backed by mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner force, according to the rebels and local elected officials, but the regime denies the presence of the controversial private security group.

There have been accusations of atrocities committed against civilians during the recent offensive by Mali’s army and the Russian force, which the authorities have repeatedly denied.

Getting reliable information from the vast, northern part of Mali is extremely difficult because of its inaccessibility, lack of security and the muzzling of dissident voices there.

WASHINGTON – The US Supreme Court played a critical role in deciding the 2000 presidential election when it halted a vote recount in Florida with Republican George W. Bush holding a razor-thin edge over Democrat Al Gore.

The stage is set for the nation’s highest court to figure prominently again in a White House race as it mulls a pair of cases involving Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the former president had incited an insurrection — the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters — and was therefore ineligible to hold the office again.

The ruling is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, which is already considering whether to examine a claim by Trump’s lawyers that he has “absolute immunity” from prosecution for actions taken while he was in the White House.

The 77-year-old Trump is currently scheduled to go on trial in Washington in March on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.

He faces similar election-related charges in Georgia and has been indicted in Florida for alleged mishandling of top secret documents after leaving the Oval Office.

– What’s next for Colorado case? –

The Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 ruling, said Trump is “disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Section Three of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, bars anyone from holding public office if they engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” after once pledging to support and defend the Constitution.

The ruling, if it withstands Supreme Court review, would bar Trump from appearing on the ballot in the primary to be held in Colorado on March 5 to select the Republican Party’s nominee for the November 2024 election.

Colorado’s highest court issued a stay, or freeze, of its bombshell ruling until January 4 pending an expected appeal by Trump’s lawyers to the Supreme Court.

Steven Schwinn, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Illinois Chicago, said he expects the Supreme Court to intervene in a case he described as “uncharted territory.”

“The court needs to make a ruling so that Colorado and other states can decide whether they’re going to list Donald Trump on the ballot or not,” Schwinn said.

“The court’s going to have to act quickly on this and I expect that it will act quickly on this,” he said.

Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, noted that it is the first time that the 14th Amendment has been used to exclude a presidential candidate from the ballot.

Granting the Colorado case for review would force the Supreme Court to “step into the thorniest of political thickets,” Muller wrote on the Election Law Blog.

– What’s next for ‘immunity’ case? –

Special counsel Jack Smith has asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether the former president has immunity from prosecution for alleged crimes committed while in office.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is to preside over Trump’s election interference trial, rejected the immunity claim advanced by Trump’s lawyers.

“Defendant’s four-year service as Commander in Chief did not bestow on him the divine right of kings to evade the criminal accountability that governs his fellow citizens,” Chutkan said.

Smith asked the Supreme Court to bypass the usual appeals court process and step in and quickly resolve the question itself.

The top court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, including three justices nominated by Trump, has yet to say whether it will hear the immunity case.

Trump’s lawyers, in a filing on Wednesday, urged the Supreme Court to hold off and let the case first go through the appeals court.

The question of whether a president has immunity should be “resolved in a cautious, deliberative manner — not at breakneck speed,” they said.

Schwinn said the Supreme Court, whenever it hears the case, is unlikely to side with Trump.

“At least a couple of the justices I think are predisposed to rule in Trump’s favor in some or all of these cases involving Trump,” he said.

“But I don’t really see the majority upholding his claim to immunity,” Schwinn said. “It’s just so far-fetched that I don’t even think this court will go for it.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 91 felony charges facing him in the different cases and has denounced them as “election interference” by Biden and Democrats seeking to derail his White House campaign.

WASHINGTON – The United States released an ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in exchange for 10 American detainees and a fugitive dubbed "Fat Leonard" in a sweeping prisoner swap deal between the rival governments on Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden made the “extremely difficult decision” to free Alex Saab, the onetime confidant of socialist leader Maduro, who is accused by the United States of money laundering for Caracas, US officials said.

Venezuela in return handed over a fugitive named Leonard Francis at the center of the US Navy’s worst ever corruption scandal, released 20 Venezuelan political prisoners and released the 10 US citizens.

Washington has been easing the pressure on the leftist Caracas government while it pushes for progress on democracy, agreeing in October to scale back oil and gas sanctions.

“Today, 10 Americans who have been detained in Venezuela have been released and are coming home,” Biden said in a statement, adding that he was “glad their ordeal is finally over.”

Biden told reporters separately that “it looks like Maduro, so far, is keeping his commitment on a free election” as agreed in the deal to lighten sanctions.

The deal was brokered by the Gulf state of Qatar, US officials added.

Maduro on his end hailed Saab’s release as “a triumph of truth,” and the ex-prisoner’s arrival home was broadcast live on local television.

Saab, who spoke at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas with Maduro at his side, thanked the Venezuelan leader and said that “today the miracle of freedom, the miracle of justice, has become a reality.”

– ‘Extremely difficult’ –

Saab, a Colombian national whom Maduro gave Venezuelan nationality and an ambassadorial title, was arrested in June 2020 on a stopover in Cape Verde and then extradited to the United States.

Saab and his business partner Alvaro Pulido are charged in the United States with running a network that exploited food aid destined for Venezuela, where millions have fled an economy that has been devastated, despite the nation’s oil wealth.

The pair are alleged to have moved $350 million out of Venezuela into accounts they controlled in the United States and elsewhere.

Maduro reacted furiously to Saab’s extradition, suspending talks with the US-backed opposition on ending the country’s political and economic crisis.

Biden “had to make the extremely difficult decision to offer something that the Venezuelan counterparts actively sought, and he made the decision to grant clemency to Alex Saab,” a senior US official said.

The official added that it was “essentially an exchange of 10 Americans and a fugitive from justice for one person returned to Venezuela.”

The White House named four of the freed Americans as Joseph Cristella, Eyvin Hernandez, Jerrel Kenemore and Savoi Wright.

Former US soldiers Luke Alexander Denman and Airan Berry, who were serving 20-year sentences for a botched armed invasion into Venezuela in 2020, were also among those freed, a Venezuelan rights group said.

– ‘Suckling pig’ –

Francis, the fugitive arrested and returned by Venezuela, was a military contractor known as “Fat Leonard” who escaped house arrest in California in September 2022 by cutting off his GPS tag.

Francis, a Malaysian national, pleaded guilty in 2015 to offering some $500,000 in bribes to Navy officers to steer official work to his shipyards, carrying out work on US vessels that prosecutors say he overcharged the Navy for to the tune of $35 million.

Francis bribed “scores” of US navy officials with gifts including “cash, prostitutes and luxury travel, and things like Cuban cigars, Kobe beef and Spanish suckling pig,” a senior US official said.

A prisoner exchange has long been in discussions as the United States switches strategy to engaging Maduro.

The United States, under Donald Trump, in 2019 declared Maduro to be illegitimate following allegations of election irregularities and launched a campaign through sanctions and pressure to remove him.

But Maduro withstood the pressure, holding on through support from a loyal political support base and the military as well as from Cuba, Russia and China.

The US dealings with Venezuela come despite separate concern over Maduro’s escalation of a long-simmering territorial dispute with Guyana over the oil-rich Essequibo region, although tensions eased last week.

The United States has been willing to trade high-profile prisoners for detained Americans, whose cases generate public sympathy.

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