In my earlier post on Libya's admissibility challenge, I explained how the Libyan government's failure to provide Saif with due process could be relevant to the admissibility of the case against him. There is, however, a far stronger argument against Libya's admissibility challenge, one that I've discussed before: namely, that Article 17(3) deems a case admissible if "the State is...
In my post on the detention of Melinda Taylor and her team, I mentioned that the "guard" planted by the Libyan government to spy on the OPCD's official meeting with Saif first intervened when Saif tried to sign a statement describing his attitude toward the Libyan criminal-justice system. I thought readers might be interested in the statement itself: Unsigned statement/sentiments from...
I have just uploaded a new essay to SSRN, entitled "The International Commission of Inquiry on Libya: A Critical Analysis." The essay is a chapter of a book on international commissions of inquiry that is being edited by the LSE's Jens Meierhenrich. Here is the introduction: This chapter provides a critical assessment of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, established...
Of all my writing, my article on the relationship between national due process and the Rome Statute's principle of complementarity is almost certainly the most unpopular. (Except in the OTP.) My thesis is a simple one: the failure of a national investigation or prosecution to live up to international standards of due process does not make a case admissible before...
The OPCD has filed its formal response to Libya's admissibility challenge. It's a monster of a brief -- 92 pages -- so it will take a number of posts to deal with it adequately. In this first post, I want to pull together the various sections of the brief that provide unprecedented detail concerning Melinda Taylor's detention. Before I do,...
Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released the report “Even a ‘Big Man’ Must Face Justice”: Lessons from the Trial of Charles Taylor. It examines the conduct of Taylor’s trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”), the court’s efforts to make its proceedings accessible to affected communities, and perceptions and initial impact of the trial in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The aim of the report is to draw lessons to promote the best possible trials of high-level suspects who are implicated in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It is based on interviews in The Hague, London, Washington, DC, New York, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, as well as review of expert commentary, trial transcripts, and daily reports produced by trial observers.
This post focuses on Human Rights Watch’s analysis of the trial’s conduct and lessons learned for future proceedings.
According to the Washington Post, Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC, said the following in response to Stephen Rapp's recent comments about the potential criminal liability of the Rwandan government for its support of Bosco Ntaganda's M23 in the Congo (emphasis added): The International Criminal Court is...
Although clearly a step up from its genocidal predecessor, Kagame's government in Rwanda is anything but progressive. According to the State Department, the government is responsible for -- inter alia -- illegal detention, torture, enforced disappearance, attempted assassinations of political opponents, restrictions on the freedom of speech and press, violence toward journalists and human rights advocates, discrimination against women/children/gays and...
This may be a bit inside baseball for most, but the Pre-Trial Chamber issued an interesting decision yesterday regarding the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence's formal response to Libya's admissibility challenge. According to the PTC, the OPCD wanted some of the information contained in its response to remain confidential not only in perpetuity, but also ex parte. In...
It looks increasingly likely. Mali has formally self-referred the situation in the country to the ICC and the OTP has already opened a formal preliminary investigation. Here is yesterday's statement from Fatou Bensouda: Today I received a delegation from the Government of Mali led by the Minister of Justice, H.E. Malick Coulibaly. The delegation transmitted a letter by which the Government...
The Independent has the story: European governments, including Britain's, have received legal opinion from a leading international counsel who argues they would be fully within their rights to ban trade with Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The formal opinion from James Crawford, professor of international law at Cambridge University, is likely to inject fresh momentum into campaigns in the United...