\nThe Hague, 12 July 2008 (FH) - The American organization for the protection of human rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has sharply
\ncriticized the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor and its communication policy in a status report presented on Friday In The Hague,
\nThe Netherlands.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis report entitled \u201cCourting History: The Landmark International Criminal Court\u2019s First Years,\u201d was written for the tenth anniversary of
\nthe adoption of the Rome Statute, on 17 July 1998, at the end of an investigation conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in
\nUganda and in Chad, on the border with Sudan.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nHRW pointed out three main issues in the organization of the Court: the quality of the prosecutor\u2019s investigations, the weaknesses of the
\ncommunication of the Court to address, in particular, the populations concerned with the crimes, and the political and financial support of the
\nstates.\n<\/p>\n
\nHuman Rights Watch recommended to the ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to \u201crecruit additional investigators, including experienced investigators,
\nas soon as possible and prioritize their input in planning and executing the office\u2019s prosecutorial strategy\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\nDuring a press conference Friday, Param-Preet Singh, a jurist in the international justice program at HRW, stated that the investigation
\nstrategy had a significant impact in the regions concerned.\n<\/p>\n
\nAccording to her, DRC rebel leader\u2019s Thomas Lubanga case was \u201cnot serious\u201d because, in particular, of the weakness of the charges issued against the
\nformer leader of the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC).\n<\/p>\n
\nIn addition, according to the HRW jurist, the strategy consisting of prosecuting the groups implicated \u201cone after the other\u201d gives the feeling
\nof biased justice.\n<\/p>\n
\nHRW also suggested the nomination of a deputy prosecutor for investigations.\n<\/p>\n
\nSince the departure in 2006 of the deputy prosecutor for investigations,Serge Brammertz, at the request of the United Nations which had named him
\nto head the international investigation commission for Lebanon, no replacement has been effected.\n<\/p>\n
\nTo support its criticisms on the investigation policy, HRW based itself on the last developments of the Lubanga case, which the trial is for the time
\nbeing suspended following the refusal of the United Nations to lift the confidentiality on certain pieces of evidence of the case given to the
\nprosecutor under the seal of confidentiality.\n<\/p>\n
\nHRW also urged the prosecutor to open field offices for investigative teams, to collect sufficient evidence \u201cto indict suspects of a
\nrepresentative range of the gravest crimes which would have been perpetrated.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\nDuring the press conference, Geraldine Mattioli, in charge of international justice for HRW, i pointed out the communication problems of
\nthe Court; in particular, mentioning the rumours which circulated in the DRC.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cIn Bunia, for example, the office of the Court [several offices were opened by the Court close to the sites on which investigations are
\nopened] is called Guantanamo because it is inaccessible to the population,\u2019\u2019 claimed the report.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe organization called for hearings to be held on location. Concerning the Lubanga case, the Democratic Republic of Congo had opposed that such
\nhearings be organized in Ituri, worried, in particular, about the possibility that such trials might revive tensions in the region.\n<\/p>\n
\nSRE\/PB\/MM\/SC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Hague, 12 July 2008 (FH) - The American organization for the protection of human rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has sharply criticized the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor and its communication policy in a status report presented on Friday In The Hague, The Netherlands. This report entitled \u201cCourting History: The Landmark International Criminal Court\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-15482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hirondellenews"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n