United Nations | Thursday
A special court set up by the UN in Sierra Leone to try those accused of the most barbaric warcrimes should be ready to issue indictments this year, a senior legal officer said on Wednesday.
”This court will be a functioning court in all respects by the third quarter of this year,” Ralph Zacklin, the UN’s deputy legal counsel, told reporters a day after briefing the Security Council.
The council gave United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan the go-ahead to establish the court, Zacklin said, and he expected Annan to make senior appointments ”within a week or two.”
Under an agreement signed January 16 with the government in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, Annan will appoint the court’s prosecutor and registrar. He will also appoint two of the three judges in its trial chamber and three of the its five appeal judges.
”I would expect that some of the first indictments could be handed down by the prosecutor by the end of the year,” Zacklin said.
The 10-year civil war, which ended when the government and the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) signed a peace agreement in May, shocked even those familiar with the excesses of the 20th century.
In addition to some 200 000 killed, thousands of civilians had their limbs hacked off. Mass rape was used to terrorise, while about 5 400 children were press-ganged as soldiers and often also mutilated to prevent their escape.
The court will hear cases of ”murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, sexual slavery, persecution on political, religious or ethnic grounds” but it will not be able to impose the death penalty.
Asked whether preparations for the new court had been affected by a recent public row over the international warcrimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, Zacklin replied that the Security Council never intended to create a clone of those courts.
The Sierra Leone tribunal will be funded by voluntary contributions from some 20 donor countries notably Britain, the United States and The Netherlands rather than by compulsory financing from all UN member states.
”It will have an extremely lean budget, it is going to be operating for three years on a budget of just under $60-million,” Zacklin said, compared with $100-million a year for the Rwandan and Yugoslav warcrimes courts.
Zacklin said he thought the Sierra Leone court could be a model for other states, notably Cambodia, where the UN has been engaged in fruitless talks on a possible trial of former Khmer Rouge leaders.
”I think Cambodia has been looking at what has been going on here for quite some time,” Zacklin said, but he refused to comment further.
Annan ordered the UN legal counsel, Hans Corell, to break off talks with the Cambodian government last month saying there were no guarantees of the independence and impartiality of the proposed tribunal.
The Security Council has scheduled consultations for Thursday and is expected to endorse Annan’s recommendation that the UN peacekeeping mission (Unamsil) in Sierra Leone be extended for another six months to September 30. – Sapa