10.10.07 - ICTR/ARCHIVES - LAUNCHING OF A STUDY ON THE ARCHIVES OF THE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS

According to an ICTR press release, "the work of this independent committee is crucial for the safeguarding of the legacy of the two tribunals, for the victims as for the future of international criminal justice", affirmed Judge Goldstone, who was the first prosecutor of the two "ad hoc" tribunals.
 
According to the text, these archives of the two tribunals consist of thousands of pages of evidence and several tens of thousands of hours of video recordings of the proceedings.
 
This committee will return its report by the end of the first quarter of 2008. Safety, accessibility as well as the safeguarding of the archives will have to be considered by the committee.
 
It will be composed for the ICTY of Professor Eric Ketelaar, former head of the Dutch public archives, as well as Mrs. Cécile Aptel, who worked in the two tribunals.
 
For the ICTR, Mr. Salou Mbaye, former head of the Senegalese public archives, and a judge from the Tanzanian appeals chamber Chande Othman, former chief prosecutor then prosecutor in Timor-Leste, were appointed.
 
The Netherlands, which has hosted since 1993 the ICTY and the International Criminal Court since its creation, already proposed to accommodate, in a building which would be built for this purpose, in The Hague the archives of the two international tribunals. Rwanda has also let known its intention to receive the archives of the ICTR.
 
PB/AT/MM
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