Introducing Alison Cole

It's our great pleasure to welcome Alison Cole (right) as an IntLawGrrls contributor.
Based in New York and serving as Open Society Justice Initiative Legal Officer, International Justice, Alison is an expert on international criminal law. That's evident in her recent writings on the March 14 International Criminal Court judgment of conviction in Lubanga – published as an op-ed in London's Guardian and as an ASIL Insight, the latter co-authored with IntLawGrrl Kelly Askin. (IntLawGrrl Jennifer Easterday's prior post on this judgment is here.)
Alison's worked in prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; as legal officer with the Co-Investigating Judges at the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia; and with investigations at the International Criminal Court and at the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. While working at these courts and tribunals, Alison covered cases addressing sexual and gender-based violence, including working on the Rape Database at the ICTR and assisting the expert witness on sexual violence, Binaifer Nowrojee.
Alison holds a first class B.A. honors degree in law from Cambridge University, participated in the European Erasmus exchange at Utrecht University, earned her LL.M. degree from Harvard Law School, and is a member of the New York bar.
In her introductory post below, Alison explains how a recent judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda bursts many myths about the viability of international prosecutions for rape and other sexual violence. Like the just-concluded 3-part series on post-genocide sexual violence survivors, Alison's post coincides with the 18th anniversary of the genocidal violence in Rwanda.
Alison dedicates her post to a fellow New Zealander, Kate Sheppard (1847-1934). Of Sheppard, about whom we've posted here and here, Alison writes:

'She was the woman behind the first critical step in women actualizing the right to vote. She was New Zealand’s pioneer suffragette – a tireless activist on a range of women’s rights issues, who ultimately achieved legislation which made New Zealand the first country in the world where women voted. In 1873 women rate-payers were able to vote in local body elections, and after several attempts of lobbying the national government over 15 years, parliament finally passed the law giving women the vote in 1893. She then became active in the suffragette movement in other countries, including the UK and the USA. She also adopted a range of other causes including dress reform for women, such as the abolishment of corsets, and promoted bicycling and other forms of physical activity for women. Recognized as a national treasure and a great source of pride for New Zealanders, her image appears on the New Zealand $10 banknote.'

Sheppard joins the many other inspiring women honored on IntLawGrrls' foremothers page.
Heartfelt welcome!

Intervention at ICC ASP

NEW YORK – In my capacity as Senior Legal Officer for the Open Society Justice Initiative, I spoke yesterday to the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court that is now holding its tenth annual meeting at U.N. headquarters. (photo credit)
IntLawGrrls have covered the meeting in posts available here -- among them, a guest post by ICC Prosecutor-Elect Fatou Bensouda.
My own remarks to the Assembly are here:

As noted by others here, huge changes are coming to the ICC within the next few months alone. The Court will soon be led by an experienced prosecutor from Africa, six new judges will be sworn in and correspondingly, six judges who have rendered key decisions on issues such as intermediaries, proofing witnesses, victim participation and witness protection, and the confirmation of charges, will be leaving the court; the leadership in the Assembly of States Parties is changing; the Court’s first Trial Chamber Judgment will be issued in the Lubanga case; and the court will begin proceedings against its first former head of state. These significant changes could potentially result in the court heading in far different directions than the course that’s been charted over the past ten years.
The Open Society Justice Initiative has been working on the ICC since its inception, and in these brief remarks, I’ll simply highlight two areas we’ve been engaged with intensely for several years: intermediaries and complementarity.

Intermediaries
Intermediaries are critical to the Courts operations and in fulfilling its mandate, and these individuals or organizations assist various organs of the court. The Justice Initiative began working with and as intermediaries in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2003. Since that time, particularly as the Lubanga trial unfolded, we have focused considerable attention on the need for guidelines in dealing with intermediaries. To this end, we urge:
► The ASP President to appoint an intermediaries facilitator through The Hague Working Group to assist in finalizing the ICC Intermediaries Guidelines and monitor their implementation to make suggestions for improvement where necessary;
► The ASP to give due consideration to the ICC Intermediaries Guidelines and adopt the Guidelines at the earliest opportunity;
► The ICC to utilize the ICC Intermediaries Guidelines to inform their interactions with intermediaries at least during 2012 pending adoption at a forthcoming ASP and to ensure the Guidelines are subject to an on-going monitoring process, involving both the Court, intermediaries and external experts to ensure the Guidelines are effective achieving their aims in managing the partnership with intermediaries.
Next month, the importance of intermediaries and dealing appropriately with them is expected to be a very fundamental issue in the Lubanga Judgment.

Complementarity
Turning to complementarity, it too is a topic that is critical to the success of the Court and for ending impunity for mass crimes. In 2008, the Open Society Justice Initiative first began working in concrete terms on assisting domestic jurisdictions in their willingness and ability to prosecute atrocity crimes. As I've posted, we began the process of designing and implementing a mobile gender justice court in eastern DRC, to provide some measure of justice to the tens of thousands of women and girls victimized by war and impunity. (See too this post.) Since then, the Justice Initiative has been analyzing complementarity options in other places, such as Kenya and Uganda.
On Monday, we launched a handbook on complementarity, titled International Crimes, Local Justice, which represents an attempt to bridge the gap between international justice and rule of law communities and to demonstrate how complementarity can be implemented once decisions are made to prioritize it.
To this end, it is important that the ASP educate development agencies, embassies on the ground, national governments, and civil society about the importance of local justice systems holding fair trials for international crimes. It can convene the relevant actors needed to address complementarity effectively, and its secretariat can promote the exchange of information between those on the ground who can best identify complementarity needs with those in capitals most familiar with knowledge of available expertise and resources.

International law as a tool to promote human rights

(On Human Rights Day 2011, we present Part 2 of a 2-part series on human rights advocacy by guest blogger Lisa Reinsberg; Part 1 is here)

Despite the significance of international law for human rights – discussed in my post yesterday – international law remains at a distance from many who work in and struggle for human rights. (credit for Human Rights Day 2011 logo)
Few victims, social justice advocates, and attorneys around the world are aware of the relevance of international law to the issues they confront. Even fewer are equipped with the knowledge and support necessary to use international law and mechanisms to protect human rights effectively, on either an individual or a societal level.
Determined persons can access a variety of academic resources. Yet such resources generally are known only by, and useful only to, the small group of attorneys routinely engaged in international advocacy. For most other persons, international law remains opaque and difficult to utilize.
Further, the ability of existing nongovernmental organizations to meet the needs of inexperienced international human rights advocates is limited in one or more important aspects -- for example, by geography or theme, or by scarce resources. The lack of transparency generally surrounding the work of human rights mechanisms’ is also a consequence of the limited resources of those bodies for press, public education, and outreach.
The outcomes of utilizing international human rights mechanisms vary, not only as a function of the differing mandates of the individual bodies, but also as a product both of the broader political and social context and of the expertise and strategies employed by victims and victims' representatives.
Indeed, in supranational human rights tribunals like those mentioned in yesterday's post, rejection rates remain high.
Lacking the resources to investigate each claim, human rights tribunals must rely on the facts and arguments provided by the parties. Often that is not ideal. A petitioner may complain of the thing that most affronted his sense of dignity or hurt his pocketbook, while neglecting to mention the injustices that seem to him routine or unlikely to interest an international body.
For example, while serving as legal fellow at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, I once came across a petition in which a group of individuals complained of the temporary confiscation of their personal items by police. It was only through additional research and correspondence that I learned the confiscation occurred in the context of a large-scale eviction, displacement, and harassment of the indigenous community to which the individuals belonged.
In the absence of broader awareness or interest, immediate and full compliance with human rights mechanisms’ recommendations or judgments still proves largely illusory. States are thought to be more likely to comply with monetary reparations than with more fundamentally protective or transformative reparations, such as legislative change. Similarly, international bodies are chronically underfunded, in spite of being responsible for ever-growing caseloads. This problem has led to repeated calls for funding reform, including this call for funding, posted a few weeks ago by James A. Goldston, Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.
Notwithstanding these challenges, international human rights bodies can have enormous impact at both the individual and societal levels. Examples include:
► An instance in which human rights intervention allowed an immigrant to stay with his family;
► An issue on which IntLawGrrls frequently have posted, the enabling of the prosecution of high-level officials through the repeal of amnesty laws that had immunized past international crimes (as in Peru and Uruguay); and
► Supranational bodies’ significant, broadly-accepted and progressive expansion of what we now consider human rights protected by law.
Even partial successes must be judged against the alternative; after all, it is only once domestic remedies prove unfruitful that victims may turn to supranational venues for individual redress. For a victim of a human rights violation, the opportunity to have her story recorded, a past injustice acknowledged, and the state’s accountability finally determined is meaningful, and more than she would otherwise have. That is even more the case with respect to a public apology from the state, such as those extended just in the last month: two by Mexico (here and here), one by Britain, and one by Guatemala.
A woman I once interviewed, who has not seen her husband since he was abducted by government agents over a decade ago, explained the difference between her hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and her previous dealings with the state. Referring to government officials as "they," she said of the judicial forum:
'There they listen.…now it is they who have to give answers.'
Helping victims obtain not only answers, but also justice, by democratizing access to international norms and mechanisms, is the aim of the International Justice Resource Center, founded earlier this year.

Completing the Work of the Special Court for Sierra Leone

In yesterday’s post, I summarized interesting developments at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) (photo credit: SCSL) as it prepares for closure and transition into the Residual SCSL, as set out in the Eighth Annual Report of the President of the SCSL. Today, I am looking at the recently-issued report by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI) titled “Legacy: Completing the Work of the Special Court for Sierra Leone”.
The OSJI report contains some interesting information on current efforts to establish the SCSL’s legacy and on the transition to the Residual SCSL.
Residual SCSL
The Residual SCSL will be created after the end of any appeals in the Charles Taylor case. The Taylor trial judgment is expected by the end of this year, and any appeals judgment by mid-2012. After the closure of the SCSL, the Residual SCSL will take over residual matters such as victim protection, monitoring of those convicted by the SCSL and serving sentences, management of the SCSL archives, conducting contempt of court proceedings, and tracking reports on the Court’s remaining indictee, Johnny Paul Koroma (thought to be dead). The Residual SCSL is separate from the International Residual Mechanism to be created for the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as set out in Security Council Resolution 1966 (2010). The OSJI report calls upon the Sierra Leonean Parliament to ratify the Agreement on the Residual SCSL, entered into by the UN and the Government of Sierra Leone in August 2010, as soon as possible. Early ratification is important, in order to iron out details of how the mechanism will work and what exactly it will do. For example, the report notes that the Principal Defender has raised questions regarding the involvement of her office in the work of the Residual SCSL, such as on implementation of sentences, family visits to convicted persons and continuing outreach.
The OSJI report also contains recommendations regarding the SCSL archives. The SCSL archives include, at present, approximately 1000 boxes of materials, including judicial records, court transcripts, and audiovisual materials such as DVDs and audio cassettes. The report notes that the SCSL faced considerable challenges in maintaining its archives, given that the SCSL had no specific archiving room [note: this should be planned for in future such tribunals]. As well, the sporadic supply of electricity meant that there was no capacity to keep a constant temperature. This is why the archives have been transferred to The Hague under an agreement between the SCSL Registrar, the Government of Sierra Leone and the Government of the Netherlands. According to the OSJI report, the SCSL archives are currently stored with the Nuremberg trial records in the Dutch National Archives. Under the Agreement creating the Residual SCSL, these originals can someday be transferred back to Sierra Leone if appropriate facilities are built to protect and store the archive. An archive access policy is expected to be defined in the coming months, before the closure of the Court. The OSJI report rightfully points out that this policy should contain ways in which the Residual SCSL can update the public archives – for example, by revisiting redaction decisions after a certain amount of time has elapsed.
The OSJI Report also contains a number of recommendations to get the Residual SCSL started in a timely fashion:

• Begin the process of hiring the Residual SCSL staff, especially the President, Registrar and Prosecutor;
• Establish the Management Committee for the Residual SCSL; and
• Fundraise for the Residual SCSL.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, the SCSL is involved in a number of legacy projects. Part of the site of the Special Court will be turned into a Peace Museum on the closure of the Court. Planning for that Museum is underway – for example, a competition has been launched for the design of the Museum’s memorial - but the OSJI report recommends that current planning and fundraising for the Museum intensify. The Peace Museum will likely host a copy of the SCSL’s public records, but there is also discussion that the Museum might host the records of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the National Commission for Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration. There is also discussion that the records relating to the civil war and the various peace processes would be sought from the UN peacekeeping missions in Sierra Leone, UNICEF, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, ECOWAS, ECOMOG, various diplomatic missions in Sierra Leone, academics and NGOs. While it seems unlikely that anything other than documents already made public would be provided to the Museum in response to this request, even so, if all of these documents were collected in one place and were catalogued and preserved appropriately, the Museum could become an incredibly important place for Sierra Leoneans, researchers, academics, the media and civil society organizations interested in issues related to the country’s armed conflict. That said, it is not clear yet whether the Museum will have the appropriate archival conditions to prevent deterioration of the materials due to Sierra Leone’s heat, humidity and regular power outages.
The SCSL Registry is currently involved in a legacy project to help train individuals for a domestic National Witness Protection and Assistance Unit. The OSJI report indicates that the permanent location for the main office of this Unit will be within the SCSL premises, and it is hoped that the Unit will be operational by December of this year, especially as it is meant to assist the Residual SCSL in fulfilling its continuing witness protection obligations. However, the Unit does not yet have funding; funding is being sought for the first five years of the Unit’s operation. After five years, the Unit is meant to be funded through the Government’s national budget.
On legacy issues, the OSJI report recommends that:

• Outreach become more robust, particularly around the issuance of the Charles Taylor trial judgment and any appeals judgment and on the Court’s legacy projects such as the Peace Museum. There is still outreach going on – see this news report of outreach in Liberia – but it becomes more difficult as the court’s staffing shrinks.
• The SCSL’s legacy can only be maintained with continued outreach: the Residual SCSL must therefore have the ability to continue outreach.

The report ends: "it is critical that the SCSL is not left to stumble at the final hurdle", closure. The SCSL and its Management Committee have been working hard to prepare for closure, but the OSJI report indicates that there is a great deal more work to be done.

The Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia Under Scrutiny

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to contribute this guest post)

The Open Society Justice Initiative released on June 14th a report calling upon the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to

Initiate an internal investigation by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) into allegations that UN officials (a title which can include judges as well as other experts) have acted contrary to the code of conduct set out by the Secretary-General’s Bulletin of 2002 governing the status, basic rights, and duties of officials other than secretariat officials, and experts on mission.

In the event that this is not feasible, OSJI proposed that the UN Security-General take steps to

appoint an independent panel of experts comprised of current and/or former judicial officers of international standing to determine whether judicial misconduct has occurred.

The report is available here; here is the press release.
For several months, controversies have emerged and played out in the Cambodian media about the development, or rather lack thereof, of Case 003 and Case 004 at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) - the first serious effort to bring the law to bear on the horrendous crimes committed by leaders of the Khmer Rouge Regime (1975-1979). The issue was compounded over earlier accusations of corruptions and political interference. See IntLawGrrls' prior coverage of this issue here and here.
In September 2009, the Office of International Co-Prosecutor submitted (without the agreement from the National Co-Prosecutor Chea Leang, right) two Introductory Submissions opening investigation into Case 003/004 to the Co-Investigating Judges. The two submissions named five suspects who the Co-Prosecutor believed were responsible for the alleged crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the ECCC. The government has clearly opposed the effort, claiming that it could plunge the country into civil war. Chea Leang, the National Co-Prosecutor, has long argued that Case 003 did not fall under the ECCC’s jurisdiction of those bearing greatest responsibility.
On April 29, 2011, the ECCC’s co-investigating judges closed their investigation into Case 003 (Case 004 is still under investigation). With the view that the co-investigating judges prematurely stopped investigation without “genuine efforts” into the alleged crimes, the new International Co-Prosecutor Andrew Cayley issued a press statement on May 9, 2011 essentially asking the Co-investigating Judges for genuine investigation. This prompted the National Co-Investigating Prosecutors to issue a separate public statement reiterating her view that the case is not under the jurisdiction of the Court.
Since then, a soap opera has been playing out in the media. The Co-Investigating judges have issued at least six press statements denouncing the International Co-Prosecutor and the media as well issuing their decision that the original submissions made by the International Co-Prosecutor was not valid without the support of the National Co-Prosecutors. In addition, on June 11, 2011, the Cambodian Daily, a local non-profit news media in Cambodia, reported at least five international staff in the Co-Investigating Judges resigned over their disagreement with their superior handling of the investigation in Case003/004.
These latest very public acrimonious debates over Case 003/004 have overshadowed much progress made by the ECCC since its inception. On July 26, 2010, the ECCC judges convicted Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, the head of infamous prison Tuol Sleng (S21) where at least 12,200 Cambodians were imprisoned, tortured, and ultimately killed, of crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The judgment was an important milestone for the ECCC. A few months later, in September, the Co-Investigating Judges indicted four more suspects for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as well as homicide, torture and religious persecution, under the Cambodian Penal Code 1956: Ieng Sary, Khieu Samphan, Nuon Chea, and Ieng Thirith. In less than two weeks, June 27, the initial hearing for Case 002 will begin.
A recent survey conducted by UC Berkeley School of Law Human Rights Center (which I co-authored) shows that Cambodians, younger and older, are more aware and know more about the ECCC and the Khmer Rouge regime compared to two years earlier. Furthermore, their perceptions of the court improved between 2008 and late 2010, with more than a 10% increase in the proportion of people who believed the Court would help rebuild trust in Cambodia and promote national reconciliation, and an 8% increase in the proportion of people who believed the Court is neutral. A majority also reported that the Court had helped rebuild their trust in the national justice system – not a small accomplishment given the country’s culture of impunity.
No matter what the outcome is - whether case 003 and 004 will ever take place or not –transparency and engagement with the public are needed to explain the decisions being made and justice is being carried with the highest standard. Without this, justice will not be served, nor will it “be seen” to be served, a crucial element to deal with the past Khmer Rouge atrocities.

Guest Blogger: Patricia M. Wald

It's IntLawGrrls' immense honor this week to welcome Patricia M. Wald (left) as a guest blogger.
Pat, about whom we've frequently posted, served from 1999-2001 as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, succeeding Gabrielle Kirk McDonald. Before joining ICTY Pat had served from 1986-1991 as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, part of a judicial tenure there that spanned 20 years. She was the court's 1st woman chief.
Service on an ad hoc tribunal was but one of many positions touching on international law and foreign policy. Last year she co-chaired the American Society of International Law's International Criminal Court Task Force, which recommended renewed U.S. engagement with the ICC. Among many other things, Pat also: served on the Open Society Institute's Justice Initiative Board; was a member from 2004 to 2005 of the President’s Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S. Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction; and served from 1994 to 1999 on the Executive Board of CEELI, the American Bar Association's Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative.
Before becoming a judge, she'd been, again among many other things: the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice; co-director of the Ford Foundation Drug Abuse Research Project; and an attorney with the Mental Health Law Project, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and DOJ's Office of Criminal Justice.
Having earned her J.D. from Yale and her B.A. from the Connecticut College for Women, Pat clerked for Judge Jerome Frank, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She's published many articles on international criminal justice, as well as five books on criminal justice, children's rights, poverty, and women.
As IntLawGrrls' guest blogger, Pat contributes 3 posts excerpted from her recent presentation at the 3d Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs in Chautauqua, New York, an event for which, as we've posted, IntLawGrrls was a proud cosponsor. (In this she joins guest/alumna Judge Marilyn J. Kaman.) In her 1st guest post, below, Pat gives recognition to women leaders in international criminal law and explains why she believes that women judges make a difference. Tomorrow's 2d post will discuss the attention due in tribunals to the needs of women and children; Wednesday's 3d post, how crimes against humanity doctrine might be used to protect women from state-tolerated regimes of oppression, in peacetime as well as in the context of armed conflict. Her full presentation will be published by ASIL, as have been the Proceedings of the 1st and 2d Dialogs.
In choosing a transnational foremother, Pat writes of

a wonderful German/Jewish woman, Gisela Konopka, who fought in prewar Germany for children's rights, was put in a concentration camp, managed to get out and work her way through occupied Europe to America, where she became the champion of children, especially girls, who got in trouble with the law.

Konopka (right), who appeared as "a prime expert witness" in a class action that Pat litigated against the Texas Youth Authority in the early 1970s, was from 1947 to 1978 a professor of social work at the University of Minnesota, where the Konopka Institute on adolescent health and medicine was named in her honor. Her publications are listed here. Konopka died at age 93 in 2003.

Pat concludes:

She inspired me as to what an older woman can do right up to the point of departure to help those behind.

Konopka joins other foremothers in the list just below our "visiting from..." map at right.

Heartfelt welcome!

Women at Nuremberg: Staffers

(Part 2 of IntLawGrrls' Women at Nuremberg series)

Images of the many women who played administrative roles during the Trial of the Major War Criminals and subsequent proceedings jump out at readers of Peter Heigl's book Nürnberger Prozesse - Nuremberg Trials (2001). Women helped direct renovation of the courtroom. They translated documents, transcribed testimony, kept papers in order, and took dictation during witness interviews. Today we'll mention just 2 of those women.

A major-domo, if you will, seems to have been Captain Virginia Gill, Administrative Officer in the Office of Chief Counsel for war crimes. (Heigl also identifies her as the Executive to the Prosecution, in a photo of her greeting 4 visiting U.S. Senators.) Gill, her hand at her cheek, is depicted above during an April 1947 courtroom session. To her left are Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, a leading prosecutor and later author of a superb memoir of the trials; Gen. Lucius D. Clay; and another prosecutor, Joseph W. Kaufman, deputy Chief of Counsel. To Gill's right, a hatted woman identified only as "Mrs. Clay" and Brig. Gen. Leroy Watson.

Another remarkable staffer at Nuremberg was Edith Simon Coliver (left, in 1940). After receiving a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley, she signed on with the U.S. Office of War Information, and helped as a translator at the San Francisco Conference that concluded with adoption of the U.N. Charter. Soon after she returned to her birthplace, Germany, to work at Nuremberg. As 1 article put it:

As a 23-year-old, Coliver translated the pretrial testimony of high-ranking Nazi officer Hermann Goering for American interrogators.
'He was not particularly thrilled to see a woman, a Jewish woman, as his interpreter,' she told the Bulletin in 1995.
Coliver surprised herself by later asking Goering to sign a program. 'Then, I was ashamed of myself,' she told the Bulletin. 'Why would I be getting an autograph from Nuremberg?' So she asked her boss to sign as well. He did, next to Goering's signature, and wrote 'To Edith Simon, who helped hang the same.'

(The incident no doubt took place during the trial. Goering indeed received the death penalty, but cheated the hangman by committing suicide in his cell.)

In her later years Coliver was an executive at the Asia Foundation, serving in the Philippines and Taiwan. The Bay Area-based "'woman of the world,'" who spoke not only German and English, but also French, Spanish, Tagalog, Portuguese, and Mandarin, died in 2002 at age 79. Among her survivors is her daughter and our colleague, Sandra Coliver, Senior Legal Officer at the Open Society Justice Initiative. (photo at right courtesy of Telford Taylor Papers, Columbia University Law School; at left, Berkeley's International House).

Coming next week in this Women at Nuremberg series: Press, Witnesses, Defendants.

All Taylor all the time

Open Society Justice Initiative has launched a blog on the trial of Charles Taylor (right). Taylor, President of Liberia until he went into exile in Nigeria in 2003, is standing trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone, a mixed national-international tribunal sitting, for this case only, at The Hague. The BBC provides, in "Charles Taylor - preacher, warlord, and president," a crisp summary of Taylor's "flamboyant" and brutal rule in West Africa; and also a summary of the charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes that he now faces.
Taylor boycotted yesterday's opening session of trial, at which were read the "catalog of horrors" that is the indictment. The stage seems set for a repeat of the representation/self-representation tussle that that played throughout the international trial of deposed Serbian President Slobadan Milosevic, aborted in 2006 when he died before return of verdict. (A symposium analyzing the problem appeared in the March 2006 edition of the Journal of International Criminal Justice).
Thanks to Opinio Juris colleague Kevin Jon Heller for the Taylorblog tip.

Corruption in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal

In the latest bout in the struggle for justice in Cambodia, the U.N. Development Program has audited the finances of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in response to allegations of corruption at the court, which has yet to begin its investigation phase. Last week, the Open Society Justice Initiative noted:

Serious allegations that Cambodian court personnel, including judges, must kick back a significant percentage of their wages to Cambodian government officials in exchange for their positions on the court, are undermining the credibility of the ECCC.

In response, Sean Visoth, the Cambodian director of the ECCC's administrative office, has severed all dealings with OSJI. This is but one of several challenges that Michelle Lee, the UN's intelligent and capable deputy director of administration at the ECCC, has faced in getting the court off the ground. (Kevin Heller's post on Opinio Juris details previous obstacles.)