As of 25 September 2025, it was 1092 days since the trial of F\u00e9licien Kabuga<\/a> opened on the premises of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT)<\/a> in The Hague. That day, Thursday 29 September 2022<\/a>, I walked into Courtroom 1 \u2013 in the building which now houses the IRMCT but was previously the home of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY<\/a>) \u2013 amidst a swarm of journalists, legal interns, diplomats, and other members of the public. I was three weeks into a PhD about historical narratives and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR<\/a>). Now, three years later, I have almost finished that PhD. Many of the interns may by now be well on their way to careers in their own right. Some of those same journalists who were there in 2022 now write about warrants for senior leaders of Russia, Israel, and Afghanistan. They cover what many consider to be the imminent collapse of the International Criminal Court (ICC<\/a>) under both sanctions<\/a> from the government of the United States of America, and the weight of its own contradictions and challenges. Others consider, even, the potential death<\/a> of international law itself. And still, F\u00e9licien Kabuga sits where he sat over 1000 days ago: in the United Nations Detention Unit, about a 10-minute drive (or bike ride) from the courtroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His trial ended three times: first in March 2023<\/a>, when a team of three medical experts ruled that he was unfit, by way of dementia; second in June 2023<\/a>, when a team of three judges ruled that his trial proper would end, but continue by way of an \u201cexamination of the facts\u201d; third in August 2023<\/a>, when a team of five different judges threw out this suggestion as impossible, and imposed an \u2018indefinite suspension\u2019 on the trial of one of the alleged kingpins of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n And still, Kabuga remains<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t know why I chose to attend this particular status conference in person. The 780 days since the Appeals Chamber declared an indefinite suspension have been punctuated by such conferences. During these sessions, everybody in the courtroom invariably expresses frustration that Kabuga is still where he is. Then there is a pause [at least from the perspective of the public], until we reconvene to hear the same frustration, and Kabuga sits \u2013 still \u2013 where he is. Perhaps, having attended the hearing in absentia<\/em> of LRA leader Joseph Kony at the ICC<\/a> just two weeks before, I had not yet had my fill of unorthodox international legal procedures. Perhaps it was the imminent end of my own PhD, bookended as it was by Kabuga\u2019s legal odyssey, that made me nostalgic. Either way, I walked once more through the security scanner and was handed my individually printed paper \u2018Visitor\u2019 ticket: no laminated electronic passes like those at the ICC, the IRMCT\u2019s more glamorous, headline-hogging sibling down the street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Strolling around the lobby of the Mechanism in 2025 feels like entering a time capsule. There are paper posters with QR codes (though you are not allowed a phone) advertising online exhibitions of the ICTY and ICTR archives, and \u2018Children in Conflict\u2019. There are framed children\u2019s drawings made during an ICTY outreach workshop at the 2014 Sarajevo Kids Festival. In the far corner hangs a dramatic sign: \u2018Bringing war criminal to justice and justice to\u2026\u201d. The word \u201cvictims\u201d is hidden behind a defunct computer monitor. In the grand atrium, where trial observers go through another security scanner, past photos of IRMCT and ICTY judges, and up some polished marble stairs to Courtroom 1, there is another hanging banner. It reads \u2018Nuremberg 1945\u2019 at the top, and \u2018The Hague 1993\u2019 at the bottom. Each label is accompanied by a picture of the respective courtrooms. A red banner across the middle reads: \u2018The First International War Crimes Tribunal since Nuremberg and Tokyo\u2019. It was quite difficult to make out the details in the pictures, as the lights in the grand atrium were turned off. A broken sound board in the corner carried several stickers labelled \u2018Not woking\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If the Mechanism\u2019s premises, and Courtroom 1 in particular, seem worn-down compared to the glossy IKEA-showroom of the ICC, it\u2019s because they are. Both have, quite literally, borne the weight of justice, and violence, at a volume much greater than the newer, permanent court. The IRMCT\u2019s home might be a premises that seems dusty, or out of date. But it has a history. Since 1993 it has seen some of the most notorious names from the violence and genocide in the former Yugoslavia occupying its chairs, including former Serbian President Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107, and convicted genocidaires<\/em> of Srebrenica including Ratko Mladi\u0107 and Radislav Krsti\u0107. The room has also seen a rotating case of legal actors, many of whom have continued working at the forefront of international criminal justice. That includes the man who, on 25 September, cut a lone, red-robed figure behind the bench: Judge Iain Bonomy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were reminded that we were not back in the early 2000s when Bonomy\u2019s soft, Scottish lilt came through our earphones to let us know that his judicial colleagues Mustapha El Baaj and Margaret deGuzman were joining via video link, as was Kabuga himself. We in the gallery could not see this, as the screens which would normally show us the courtroom, including its virtual participants, were switched off. As the voice of prosecutor Rupert Elderkin \u2013 also present virtually \u2013 reached my ears during the parties\u2019 introductions, my headset switched itself off. I soon realised that I had to press a button every 30 to 45 seconds to prevent this, and after a few confusing minutes of jumping between English and French recordings, I settled for the volume button. The rest of the status conference thus came through my ears as though I was sitting on a swing set: with voices getting incrementally louder, and then quieter again. During a stint of private session, I learned through a whisper that it was a gallery-wide problem, and that we had a room full of dying headsets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The status conference itself was both surprisingly public, and surprisingly informative. Judge Bonomy seems to hold a personal, poorly hidden distaste for both inefficient justice and private sessions, making him instantly popular among those of us in the gallery. He began by giving us, \u201cthe public\u201d, an overview of updates, about the work that has been going on \u201ctirelessly\u201d behind the scenes. In reports filed in April and June this year, an \u201cexpert in critical care medicine\u201d has found F\u00e9licien Kabuga not \u201cgenerally fit to fly\u201d. Considering he was unfit, in 2022, to be flown to Arusha (Tanzania) for a trial closer to the site of his alleged crimes, this is unsurprising. But these updates did give us a further insight into the now-90-or-92-year old\u2019s deteriorating condition. The critical care expert noted Kabuga\u2019s \u201cphysical frailty, coexisting diseases\u201d and \u201cmedication\u201d, would make a flight to somewhere as far away as Rwanda a major risk. The Prosecution, in a fit of either desperation or prosecutorial optimism, seems to think that this risk can be mitigated. Though the judges have yet to make a decision since the report of June 2025, Elderkin\u2019s team made a filing on 9 September re-arguing that the best (and only) option for Kabuga is Rwanda. Bonomy, with his trademark wry tone, made a point of announcing that there was \u201cno utility to this filing\u201d, and that \u201cto the extent that this submission is a motion, it is denied\u201d. We all \u2013 Elderkin included \u2013 must await the judges\u2019 decision on the matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two unexpected and more unusual public session updates followed this. First, the Registry informed the Court that it was in the process of recovering Kabuga\u2019s frozen assets to pay for legal fees. Unfortunately two planned meetings for early September, one \u201chigh-level\u201d and one \u201ctechnical\u201d, with the unnamed State in which Kabuga\u2019s assets rest, were called off at the last minute due to that State\u2019s \u201cprevailing political circumstances\u201d. The mystique of this pronouncement was diminished somewhat by the audible whispers of \u201cthat\u2019s gotta be France<\/a>\u201d that rippled across the gallery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, we heard from Kabuga\u2019s counsel Emmanuel Altit about two European states who had originally rejected Kabuga\u2019s request to be released on their territory, but with whom further conversations were now ongoing. One of these states remained unnamed, but the second \u2013 France \u2013 was for the first time publicly discussed. Altit said that France had recently denied Kabuga\u2019s request through the courts, stating that Kabuga as an individual was not in a position to make such a request, and that it must be done through the Mechanism as a \u201cdiplomatic entity\u201d. Altit expects this to be overturned on appeal, but that this procedure could take up to 8 or 10 more months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unusually, for adversarial international criminal justice proceedings, the Prosecution seems to be largely irrelevant to the Court\u2019s current task: finally finding an end for this Kabuga-limbo. Elderkin\u2019s disembodied voice interjected only twice, both times to emphasise that he could \u201cbe brief\u201d, and then say not much of anything, while his Hague-based colleagues sat in stoic silence. One of them was typing on his phone. Bonomy reiterated that all the Court\u2019s actors are working \u201ctirelessly\u201d to secure Kabuga\u2019s release, and lambasted \u201cthe unwillingness of certain European states to accept him on their territory\u201d. When is a defendant no longer a defendant? For the states that claim to champion international justice and the rule of law, it seems that the lack of a conviction is not enough. Kabuga \u2013 like the other ICTR defendants who were either acquitted or have served their sentences, and are now trapped in Niger<\/a> \u2013 is being consistently reminded that legal justice is, for some states, still not enough, and that political justice marches to the beat of its own drum. While an end for Kabuga may be approaching, it seems unlikely that this will be our last status conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\t It will, however, be the last one in Courtroom 1. As the proceedings drew to a close, Bonomy made the unexpected announcement that this session would be the last time, ever, that a trial chamber sits in \u201cthis storied and historic courtroom\u201d. Future hearings about Kabuga will be held in a \u201cmodified conference room\u201d, he said, with a slight smile that could easily have been mistaken for a grimace. Without mentioning what is to become of Courtroom 1, he ended by reflecting on the hundreds of people who have worked within its walls since 1993 \u2013 security guards, interpreters, registry officials, judges, witnesses, victims, prosecution, defence, defendants \u2013 \u201call in pursuit of fairness, justice, and truth\u201d. For Bonomy, a court is more than its arena: it is \u201cat its heart simply a forum where arguments are made, evidence is heard, and decisions are made\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Bonomy stood, and the curtains lowered, the public gallery was briefly, unusually, silent. Then: an explosion of nostalgia. My neighbour exclaimed that he had spent hundreds of hours in this gallery, covering trials. Further back, other journalists spoke of the people they had seen sitting in those chairs that would now not be used again. \u201cI spent my 20s at this court\u201d, said one of them. The room had been formative not only for law and for justice, but for careers, lives, and stories. When I posted about Bonomy\u2019s announcement online after the hearing, I received surprisingly emotional reflections from friends, colleagues, and people I had never met. For all, the space signified something bigger, and perhaps something that they now worry we might not see again: a concerted, widespread effort to achieve \u2018justice\u2019, whatever that may mean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes a court a court? Undoubtedly, it is the people who populate it. But such forums for arguments, evidence, and decisions must still be designated spaces, often imbued with the pomp and circumstance of statutes, treaties, and rules, where individuals come together for that specific purpose. Courts are spaces that facilitate the interactions that \u2013 question by question, answer by answer, argument by argument, submission by submission \u2013 make up international criminal justice. They also hold all the emotions that are generated by those interactions, and the difficulty of narrating, prosecuting, and judging mass violence. The closure of the ICTY and IRMCT\u2019s Courtroom 1 marks the extinction of one such space, which has held the weight of its fair share of expectations, emotions, and justice. Will it be allowed to remain \u2013 if no longer a driver of justice \u2013 as a memory of, or testament to, its past, like Nuremberg\u2019s Courtroom 600? Or will it disappear altogether? Its eventual fate may act as a sign of our times: lacking both the justice aspiration of 1945 and the justice idealism of 1993. Bonomy did not speak to the courtroom\u2019s future. Perhaps he did not know.<\/p>\n\n\nWhen is a defendant no longer a defendant?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When is a court no longer a court?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"F\u00e9licien](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Rwanda_Felicien-Kabuga-closeup-540x360.jpg\")
<\/div><\/a>\r\n\t\t\t![\"Lucy](\"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/Lucy-Gaynor-1.jpg\")
LUCY GAYNOR<\/strong><\/p>\n