Tribunal Roundup

Some interesting developments at the international tribunals over the past few weeks:

• Most notably, Saddam Hussein has asked the ICC to investigate his alleged mistreatment by the U.S. while incarcerated during trial. Whatever the substantive merits of the allegations, the ICC has no jursidiction to investigation them, because neither Iraq nor the U.S. has ratified the Rome Statute. The same is true for Saddam’s additional claim that his trial is fundamentally unfair — and even if it wasn’t, the absence of due process in a national proceeding is not a ground for admissibility under the Rome Statute, as I explain in my forthcoming article on the subject.

• Nepal’s newly-reinstated Parliament has directed the government to ratify the Rome Statute, believing that membership in the ICC will discourage further human-rights abuses as peace talks between the government and the rebels continue. Asia is poorly represented at the ICC; to date, Cambodia, East Timor, the Republic of Korea, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Tajikistan are the only Asian parties to the Rome Statute. Thailand, the Philippines, and Bangladesh have signed the Rome Statute, but have yet to ratify it.

• The ICTR has revealed that the cost of its operations will exceed $1 billion by the end of 2007. To date, the Tribunal has decided 28 cases, with three final acquittals; 27 cases are still in progress, with fourteen more individuals awaiting trial; and 18 suspects are still at large.

• The ICTR is investigating 12 individuals on the Tribunal’s payroll who are suspected of having participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. One individual about whom I’ve blogged before, Callixte Gakwaya, is actually a member of another genocide suspect’s defense team. Results of the investigation should be released later this month.

• The Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY has appealed the two-year sentence given to Naser Oric, a Bosnian Muslim commander in Srebrenica who was convicted for failing to prevent his soldiers from killing and mistreating Bosnian Serb prisoners. The prosecution had requested an 18 year sentence. Oric’s case illustrates the difficult religious and ethnic politics of the ICTY, with Serbs citing the sentence as further evidence of the Tribunal’s anti-Serbian bias — Oric is one of a very small number of Muslims tried for committing crimes against Serbs — and Muslims claiming that Oric was only prosecuted to placate the Serbian community.