Swiss

Alieu Kosiah killed civilians and unarmed soldiers, and ordered lootings and other crimes against humanity.

Switzerland’s supreme court upheld a 20-year jail sentence for former Liberian rebel commander Alieu Kosiah on Friday, but overturned a conviction for crimes against humanity.

In 2021, Switzerland’s Federal Criminal Court found Kosiah, now 51, guilty of multiple atrocities committed during the first of Liberia’s back-to-back civil wars, in which about 250,000 people died between 1989 and 2003.

In 2023, the court’s appeals chamber upheld his 20-year sentence for war crimes and, for the first time in Swiss history, also made a new ruling that Kosiah was guilty of crimes against humanity.

The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland was asked to review the case, and its verdict, dated September 28, was published on Friday.

The court “rejected the appeal filed by a high-ranking Liberian military official challenging his conviction for violations of the laws of war committed between 1993 and 1995 during the first Liberian civil war”, it said in a statement.

“However, the court has acquitted the individual of the charge of crimes against humanity, based on a strict application of the principle of non-retroactivity.”

Switzerland recognises the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows it to prosecute individuals suspected of international crimes, regardless of where those crimes were committed.

The court said the offence of crimes against humanity – introduced into Swiss law in 2011 – could not be applied to acts committed before then.

Kosiah’s conviction for violating the law of war was upheld, as was the maximum 20-year custodial sentence imposed.

“The decision makes final the first war crimes conviction ever handed down by a Swiss civilian court, and the first conviction anywhere of a Liberian for war crimes committed during the country’s civil wars,” said the Swiss organisation Civitas Maxima, which works to bring perpetrators of international crimes to justice.

Kosiah settled in Switzerland in the late 1990s and was arrested in 2014.

“Today the survivors of Alieu Kosiah’s crimes have final justice,” said Civitas Maxima director Alain Werner, who represents victims in the case.

“We are, however, deeply disappointed by the acquittal on crimes against humanity. What happened in Lofa between 1993 and 1995 is the very definition of a crime against humanity.”

Like war crimes, crimes against humanity refer to atrocities, including murder, torture and rape. However, instead of isolated or sporadic events, the charge is used for incidents carried out in a widespread or systematic way.

In the 2021 verdict, Kosiah was found guilty of a slew of war crimes committed as commander of the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy rebel group.

He ordered or participated in the killing of 17 civilians and two unarmed soldiers, as well as rape and the deployment of a child soldier, the court ruled.

He had also ordered looting and repeatedly ordered, or had himself inflicted, cruel and humiliating treatment of civilians and mishandled corpses, according to the verdict.

Switzerland formally reopens diplomatic office in North Korea after its closure in 2020.

Switzerland has formally reopened its diplomatic office in North Korea as Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis held talks in Pyongyang about normalising political relations between the two countries.

On Friday Cassis wrapped up a two-day visit to North Korea – the first by a Swiss government minister in more than two decades – in which he discussed “regularising political relations and reestablishing a political dialogue”, he wrote on X.

Cassis, who is also Switzerland’s vice president, met Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui and Jo Yong Won, a secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party.

“We also exchanged views on security on the Korean Peninsula and broader Eurasian security challenges,” he added on X.

After the formal reopening of the Swiss diplomatic office on Thursday, Cassis posted that he was “pleased” to mark a “new chapter” in his country’s presence in Pyongyang, hailing the office as a “concrete step towards strengthening direct dialogue” with North Korea.

The office, operational since October 19, will not have an ambassador. It reports to the Swiss embassy in Beijing, which handles diplomatic and consular relations with North Korea. The office had closed in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This office will help to strengthen direct contacts with the authorities of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and support political dialogue with them,” the Swiss Foreign Ministry said.

North Korea’s state news agency KCNA confirmed Cassis’s arrival in the country on Thursday but gave no details on the purpose of the visit. It had not been known beforehand whether he would meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and there has been no report of a meeting.

Bern said it intended to maintain its commitment to the region amid heightened tensions and limited international contact with North Korea, having been one of the few Western countries to keep up a dialogue with Pyongyang.

The last Swiss Federal Council member to visit was then-Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, in 2003.

Cassis crossed into South Korea on Friday for the final leg of his regional trip.

According to the Swiss foreign ministry, his talks in Seoul will focus on security on the peninsula, prospects for easing regional tensions and bilateral ties.

Switzerland’s involvement on the Korean Peninsula dates back more than 70 years, including its role on the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission.

Also in South Korea, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz invoked his country’s reunification during a visit to the inter-Korean border. “Let us hope that Korea, too, will one day have the chance to regain its national unity,” he said.

It’s the worst ski resort nightmare: hillsides of shaggy yellow grass streaked with slush under a leaden sky that’s coughing up sleet. Parts of Europe – places previously accustomed to crisp snow fields and pristine blue skies – are now facing this calamity, something meteorologists might describe as a British winter.

Not everywhere, of course. Only lower altitudes are seeing such disasters. Higher up, normal service continues. I’m in the Swiss resort of Laax, where most of the slopes are at about 2,000 metres, lofty enough to be snow-secure, for now. The halfpipe is busy with dudes in baggy trousers and headphones nonchalantly practising their double corks. On the traditional pistes there are four-year-olds who could probably ski before they could walk. And then – Switzerland has its wacky side – three young men in first-world-war greatcoats on antique wooden skis propel themselves with rough-hewn quarter-staves.

Is all this destined to disappear, perhaps in our children’s lifetimes? To put it in stark, white and black terms: are ski resorts in the same predicament as oil-dependent desert states, watching their one key source of wealth dwindle and disappear?

If so, Laax is not going down without a fight. This unusual Swiss resort, close to the Austrian border, is making a bold attempt to be carbon neutral by 2030, a goal that requires cutting out all oil use, making all energy generation sustainable, and reducing food waste to zero. Stung by climate crisis criticism levelled at the ski industry, this community is now far ahead of most. What I have come to see may turn out to be the future of winter sports.

Down in Laax, I meet Reto Gurtner, 71, CEO of the Flims Laax resort. His father built the first ski lifts back in 1962. “Although there had been summer visitors since the 19th century, Laax was a poor village back then,” says Gurtner.

In the 1970s, something significant changed. Gurtner went to study at UCLA and, under the California sun, discovered skateboarding. Even now the memory makes his eyes light up. “They were inventing new sports and I loved the style: no nationalism or militarism. Skateboards, mountain bikes, snowboards – if you did a good run, everyone applauded. It didn’t matter who you were. There was a freedom about it.”

He came home with a degree in economics, but more importantly perhaps, a snowboard and a mountain bike. “We went up on the glacier and built the first halfpipe with shovels.”

At first, there was a lot of resistance. Local ski outfitters refused to stock snowboards, while in summer, farmers were outraged at the sight of cyclists pelting down mountain tracks. “We made every cyclist wear a bib,” says Gurtner with a chuckle. “Then the farmers thought it was a race and were fine with that.”

Conversation with Gurtner is a wild ride. We cartwheel through Steve Jobs, the German poets and the Wu-Tang Clan, as he describes how his visionary approach evolved into something he calls “greenstyle”, an optimistic and well-designed future.

That vision is found in all the new buildings around the resort, nowhere more so than the ski lift in the neighbouring village of Flims, where I head with local guide Doris Rellstab. “The new gondola system does away with unoccupied ski gondolas going up and down the mountainside,” she says. A complex algorithm allows skiers to choose one of five destinations up the mountain, despatching individual gondolas, which balances energy efficiency with passenger demand. As we are lifted smoothly up over the fir trees, the quiet efficiency of this on-demand system becomes immediately apparent.

Rellstab tells me how things have changed in the half century since she began teaching winter sports. “Yesterday, I taught my first Arab group. They were a lot of fun.”

Our destination is Segnes, high above the treeline at 2,100 metres. Having left the gondola, we don snow shoes and head into a bowl-like snow-filled valley. A couple of miles ahead, the valley ends in a sheer rock face topped by a jagged range of peaks. “That’s the Tschingelhörner,” says Rellstab. “Can you see the line in the rock below the peaks? That was once a geological mystery.”

In 1848, the celebrated geologist Roderick Impey Murchison arrived here with a local expert, Arnold Escher von der Linth. Older rocks were overlaying younger, a puzzle for which there was no explanation. It took more than a century for scientists to solve the problem: the ancient African tectonic plate was riding up over the younger European one. The world was indeed upside down.

In summer, this area is covered in rare Alpine flowers and there’s a mountain hut to stay in. Next to us are the tracks of a snow hare. “Wildlife is doing well here,” says Rellstab. “The wolf and lynx have both returned.”

In fact, climate change appears to be assisting wolves in the Alps. The first Alpine pack was recorded in 1993, and by 2021 there were more than 250, with an annual growth rate of about 25%. Switzerland, once entirely wolf-free, now has about 40 packs. Rellstab shows me a website where sightings are monitored. There are conflicts with farmers and hunters, but the numbers keep growing, an indication that parts of the ecosystem are doing well out of retreating snowlines.

Perhaps more surprising is that lack of snow is not a big worry to the resort. As Gurtner points out: “Laax is not snow-dependent. A halfpipe or a snow freestyle playground doesn’t need a lot, and we make it with hydro power. And we’ve got mountain bikes and amazing hikes.”

Later that day, I am up on the mountain with my skis, wandering around on blue runs. Conditions are a bit icy and I’m playing safe, finding myself on a less frequented route that dips down into the valley. And then I come over a ridge and the snow on either side is gone – only the piste remains, a broad band of white curling down through green pasture dotted with lovely old barns. Cannon snow is more durable, surviving longer when the “real” stuff melts. Most Alpine ski stations are already reliant on it, but unlike many, Laax does not add any chemical or biological additives to the water in its cannons. With sustainable power sources and electric piste-grooming machinery now becoming available, cannon snow is not as environmentally destructive as it may appear.

At the foot of the hill, I reach the village of Falera, neighbour to Laax. There is one old chair lift, clanking and squeaking, and as I approach it comes to a halt. “Sorry,” says the attendant, “we are closed now.”

I wander into the village, all hand-hewn barns with neat log stacks. I can’t see any cars. If Laax is taking the technological solution, its neighbour appears to have chosen a less frenetic and more traditional route to net zero. After 20 minutes, a bus (electric, naturally) appears. As I ride back to Laax, I check the wildlife website that Rellstab recommended. And I get a shock. According to a CCTV report from a few hours earlier, a wolf had walked within a mile of me. Outside my hotel, I jump off the bus. Evening is falling. I wait for a line of silent cars to go by. With electric motors everywhere, the town is hushed. Climate change, I reflect, is nothing if not unpredictable. When the wolves howl, you will hear them.

The trip was provided by Flims Laax and rental equipment by Ecoski . Trains run from Zurich via Chur and the Rhine Gorge to Ilanz, where there’s a bus service to Laax. Inghams offers a seven-night trip to Laax from £1,618pp B&B, including flights

Caracas, October 19, 2026 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Switzerland’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) has lifted “precautionary asset freezes” against Marleny Contreras, wife of Venezuelan Interior, Justice, and Peace Minister Diosdado Cabello, and United Socialist Party (PSUV) lawmaker Jorge Arreaza.

The country’s authorities stated that their inclusion on a list of sanctioned Venezuelan officials was “a mistake” after determining that neither holds assets in Swiss territory nor faces corruption accusations.

The asset freeze was imposed on January 5, two days after US forces bombed Caracas and kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Bern claimed the measure was intended to prevent potentially illicit assets from leaving Switzerland amid eventual legal investigations.

The legal measure remains in force until 2030 and includes a formal commitment to return to the Venezuelan people any resources proven to have been illicitly acquired. Over 40 current and former Venezuelan officials, as well as direct relatives and alleged associates, remain on the list.

Alongside the removal of Contreras and Arreaza, the Swiss government added six individuals to the register. New additions include former Venezuelan government envoy and Industry Minister Álex Saab and his business associate Álvaro Pulido. 

Pulido appeared before a Miami court on October 13 after being handed over by Venezuelan authorities to face money laundering charges. Saab was likewise surrendered to US agencies and pleaded guilty to money laundering accusations, pledging to “cooperate” with other US legal investigations.

Saab and Pulido were joined in the Swiss blacklist by José Vicente Amparan Croquer, a lawyer whom US authorities have accused of laundering money from an alleged US $1.2 billion embezzlement scheme at Venezuelan state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and Mario Enrique Bonilla Vallera, a businessman identified as an alleged front man for Nicolás Maduro’s stepsons.

The list also includes the wife and former wife of two former deputy electricity ministers who were already on the blacklisteed: Milagros Coromoto Torres Morán, wife and business partner of Nervis Villalobos, and María Consuelo Pardi Celis, former wife of Javier Alvarado Ochoa.

The Swiss decision came two days after the US Treasury Department removed Jorge Rodríguez, president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, chief negotiator in a US-backed dialogue process with an opposition faction, and brother of Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, from its own sanctions list. Delcy Rodríguez herself was removed from the Treasury’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list last April.

Jorge Rodríguez was first targeted on September 25, 2018, during Trump’s first term in office. Individual sanctions block any assets the person may have on US soil and bar US individuals and companies from engaging in any transactions. The measures lead to issues of overcompliance.

Spanish daily ABC’s White House correspondent David Alandete argued that the parliamentary leader’s removal from the SDN list was a reward for his “cooperation” in a “new phase of relations between Caracas and the White House.”

The move was announced on the same day that Delcy Rodríguez’s acting government and the opposition delegation led by former lawmaker Dinorah Figuera began a third round of US-endorsed talks in Caracas. The discussions are intended to address the continuation of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) renewal process, as well as political rights and guarantees.

Nevertheless, 254 individuals and entities remain on the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list. The Trump administration also maintains wide-reaching coercive measures against key Venezuelan economic sectors, including oil, mining, and banking.

Since January, Washington has issued sanctions waivers to allow select Western corporations to secure access to Venezuelan oil and mineral resources under favorable conditions. The White House has also greenlit select US companies to export and import products to and from the Caribbean nation. However, revenues from Venezuelan exports are deposited in a US Treasury account, with US officials deciding when and how much to disburse to Caracas.

Last week, the Trump administration issued General License 60A. The license authorizes humanitarian assistance transactions focused on addressing damage caused by Venezuela’s June 24 double earthquake until April 21, 2027.

Edited by Ricardo Vaz in Caracas.