In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Africa

22 Jan

It's not yet available on the ICC website, but Judge Eboe-Osuji (the President of the Court) and Judge Hofmański (the President of the Appeals Division) have released a short Joint Declaration defending Judge Eboe-Osuji's appointment as the Presiding Judge in the Gbagbo No Case to Answer appeal. The Declaration does not explain his appointment, which seems to confirm Judge Ibañez Carranza's...

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22 Jan

Another day, another slow-motion fiasco at the ICC. Today's episode: Judge Luz del Carmen Ibañez Carranza has dissented from a decision to assign a presiding judge to an appeal. The appeal in question involves the Gbagbo No Case to Answer decision, about which I blogged extensively yesterday. The President of the Appeals Division appointed Judge Eboe-Osuji, even though he is already the...

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21 Jan

I highly recommend Paul Bradfield's erudite post yesterday, in which he suggests that "the Gbagbo Trial Chamber appears to have departed from the standard enunciated in Ruto" concerning the standard of proof applicable to No Case to Answer (NCA) motions. I do not completely agree -- and I want to offer a couple of thoughts on Paul's post, with the caveat that we...

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28 Nov

I wasn't feeling particularly well on my recent long flight from Buenos Aires to Amsterdam, so I took advantage of my sickness to binge watch all eight episodes of BBC2's international criminal justice drama, Black Earth Rising, which focuses on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I wasn't expecting much, because BER was billed as a drama about the ICC. But I was...

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19 Nov

[Patryk I. Labuda is a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University School of Law.] News broke on Saturday, November 17, that the Central African Republic (CAR) had transferred Alfred Yekatom, alias ‘Rombot’ or ‘Rambo’, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the arrest warrant, Yekatom has been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes for acts allegedly committed...

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04 Jul

On Monday, the OTP filed a motion in the Bemba Witness Tampering Case entitled "Detailed Notice of Additional Sentencing Submissions." The OTP argues that, in determining the appropriate sentence for Bemba, Kilolo, and Mangenda, Trial Chamber VII should take into account the fact that the witness tampering by Bemba and his co-defendants led the Appeals Chamber to wrongly acquit Bemba in the...

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16 Apr

[Bianca Maganza is a PhD candidate in International Law and a Teaching Assistant at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.] Some days ago, the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the CAR (hereinafter, MINUSCA) got involved in heavy fire exchange with an armed group known as KM5 in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic...

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15 Apr

Opinio Juris readers might be interested in this letter from GLAN Legal -- the Global Legal Action Network -- to the Presidents and Attorneys General of Israel and Uganda. It was written by Itamar Mann, Yannis Kalpouzos, and Omer Shatz, with input from me. Here is the introduction: The Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) is an organization of lawyers initiating transnational...

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17 Jan

Justice in Conflict has a guest post today from a scholar who has written a book about the Lubanga trial. I think the post makes some excellent points about the problems with the trial. But I have serious reservations -- acknowledging that I have not read the book -- about the author's take on why the trial did not focus...

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