Remember that Charles Taylor trial in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, hosted at the ICC in the Hague? Well, things aren’t going so well, according to this NYT report. The trial itself is following the Milosevic model, which means that it is pretty much going nowhere. Various interesting tidbits:

• The ICC, which is hosting the trial, wanted to charge some hefty rents for use of its fancy new facilities, thus driving up costs
  
• The Special Court is operating under the critical microscope of the international criminal lawyers who live and work in The Hague, and not doing very well, with everyone sniping at everyone else…
  
• The Taylor trial alone will cost as much as $4 million, with Taylor demanding, and receiving, a budget of $100,000 a month for legal and other expenses
  

There appears to be plenty of blame to spread around for this debacle ranging from U.S. officials who insisted on moving the trial to the Hague to some poor judicial management. But these are problems endemic to all international war crimes trials that operate under generous international standards of criminal procedures and attempt to charge a lifetime’s worth of crimes in a single trial. Milosevic succeeded in dragging out his trial for years, and there seems little doubt that Taylor will be able to do the same.

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