Focus on ICTR: The defense
perspective
|
The UN International
criminal Tribunal
for Rwanda (ICTR) has a few years to go and discussions about its
legacy for the International Criminal Law has started. While some
perceive that Tribunal as a major advancement, others, including
defense laywers, who have been defending genocide suspects for last
fourteen years, think that this ICTR and other ad hoc courts, have
created a regrettable precedent. ‘The ICTR has been
a big
mistake’, said Kenyan defense attorney Kennedy Ogetto. He was
speaking in The Hague, The Netherlands on 14 November 2009 in a
three-day self-sponsored conference. Over 100 people, mostly Rwandans,
but also foreigners coming from all over the world listened to
frustration-marked presentations by the lawyers and other scholars and
experts.
The
ICTR is illegal
The legality of the ICTR is still being discussed, even as the
Court’s closure is drawing near. In this regard, the laywers
and
scholars who spoke during the conference converge to qualify the
setting up the ICTR by the Security Council as an abuse of power....
Fabricated
Truth
The ICTR was set up in late 1994, only months after the genocide that
claimed about a million lives among the Tutsi minority. However, many
speakers questioned this version, qualifying it as incomplete. ...
Joint
Criminal Enterprise
British International Criminal Law scholar and Sorbone professor John
Laughland holds that prosecuting and trying suspects in groups in
criminal courts undermines the rule of law.... View
all video reports |
THE
HAGUE – 16 November --
For the first time in history, defense lawyers before international
criminal courts convened a self-organized conference to discuss, and
publicize, the obstacles that prevent accused persons from receiving
fair trials, particularly at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Rwanda (ICTR). The co-sponsors included 20 law-schools,
lawyers
and human-rights groups from Europe, Africa and N. America...
J
