When Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, was arrested 17 months ago on war crimes charges and ordered to face international judges, it was heralded as a milestone for justice in Africa.
His trial, the first war crimes trial for an African president, was scheduled to start in April.
But having barely begun, the case has already lost its momentum. Last Monday, hearings were postponed for the fourth time this year, and the court is now set to reconvene in January.
The latest disruption was the result of Taylor's dismissal of his court-appointed lawyer, Karim Khan. His new lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, told the court that his team needed at least four months to study the 40,000 pages of evidence already before the court. And he said that Taylor's personal archives, about 50,000 pages, had only just surfaced and needed to be examined.
The delays have caused much finger pointing about who at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone is most to blame.
The responsibility is variously pinned on the judges for trying to schedule the complex case with undue haste, on the court administration for being inept and short of funds, or on Taylor -- who has denied all criminal charges -- for stalling.
One problem that has dogged the trial is that it was moved from the relatively inexpensive Sierra Leone to the much costlier city of The Hague, in the Netherlands.
Several countries, including the US, which was deeply involved in creating the tribunal, feared that a trial in Freetown for such an influential politician could cause unrest in west Africa.
Court officials say that the move has created more bureaucracy while driving up salaries and travel bills for staff and witnesses.
Stephen Rapp, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, said: "The court had to find new offices, move people, hire more staff, find safe quarters for witnesses, all on a very tight budget."
Turf wars arose with the host, the new International Criminal Court. An official with the Sierra Leone tribunal, who did not want to be named because he needs to work with both courts, said the international court initially tried to charge "an enormous sum" for the use of one of its rarely occupied courtrooms and insisted on renting out a whole floor of its cellblock instead of just Taylor's two cells. In the end, prices came down.
But the new location has also put the Sierra Leone court under a stronger spotlight in a town with three other international courts, packed with lawyers, students and observers from the fast-growing field of international law, some of whom have been critical.
As it happens, the Sierra Leone court was planned to benefit from lessons learned from the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and for the former Yugoslavia, which were seen as slow, expensive and far from the wars' victims.
When it opened in 2002, US officials involved in its creation presented the new institution as a better model, one that would be cheaper, faster and leaner and would try only a few top leaders. One innovation was using both national and international judges.
But in practice, the court, now dealing with just 10 defendants, has had difficulty in carrying out its mandate. Operating in two cities -- in Europe for Taylor and Africa for the other cases -- has clearly complicated its mission, but critics say that from the start the court has been slow and inept.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS