Reforms introduced at the International Criminal Tribunal

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), in Arusha, Tanzania, is now empowered to transfer indictees to national courts for prosecution, as part of a series of reforms introduced during a closed-door session between 5 and 6 July. The ICTR spokesman, Kingsley Moghalu, told reporters on Monday that the motivation behind the new rule was to enable the body to concentrate on "a limited number of important cases" in order to finish trying them by 2008. He said a case could be transferred to a national court in the country in which the indictee had been arrested, and where the authorities were prepared to prosecute in their own courts, or to another country whose authorities were prepared to do so, without objections from the country where the arrest had been effected. In either case, the relevant country would have to exercise jurisdiction over the accused. The new rule, Moghalu said, had been inspired by "the principle of universal jurisdiction", and would allow concurrent jurisdiction to be exercised for crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Rwanda in 1994 between national courts and the ICTR, while retaining the primacy of the latter. This was the first time an international tribunal of the United Nations had been empowered to transfer cases to a third country, other than that in which the accused was arrested, Moghalu added. Another reform introduced is the empowerment of the ICTR to assign a legal counsel to an accused in a case where the latter has declined to engage a defence lawyer, or has declined a particular counsel. This measure would be applied if deemed to be in "the interest of justice", Moghalu said. To reduce time spent considering "time-consuming" evidence inside the courtroom, and to expedite proceedings, written evidence will now also be permitted where it seeks to prove a matter other than the acts or conduct of the accused. To date only oral evidence has been accepted. The practice of fee-splitting, whereby a counsel shares part of his remuneration or gifts with a client in order to be kept on as defence lawyer, has also been prohibited. Two Rwandan genocide survivor groups, Ibuka and Avega, which suspended cooperation with the ICTR in January, have repeatedly criticised the workings of the court, accusing it of failing to protect witnesses, and of employing defence investigators who had themselves participated in the genocide. Asked if the reforms were connected with these criticisms, Moghalu said that the reforms had come about "as a result of the tribunal's experience in total", Internews reported. There are 22 persons on trial before the ICTR, with a further 29 awaiting trial. Eight persons have been convicted, and one acquitted.