Geoffrey Robertson’s future as president of the United Nations-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone hung in the balance last night after the British barrister defied calls to resign over alleged bias against some defendants.
Robertson staked his reputation on convincing fellow judges to keep him as their chief justice despite efforts by defence lawyers and the prosecution to dump him because of a book he wrote which depicted Sierra Leone’s rebels as bloodthirsty criminals.
Three appeal court judges are expected to rule over the weekend on whether he will stay on as president of a court that is supposed to be a bold step in the evolution of international justice.
Defence lawyers said the court would suffer a crisis of legitimacy if Mr Robertson stayed, because of his perceived hostility to some of the defendants accused of atrocities in the west African country’s decade-long civil war.
But in a submission to the appeals chamber yesterday Robertson urged the court to dismiss the attempt to disqualify him, suggesting it lacked authority, since he was appointed by the government of Sierra Leone.
Robertson also argued that he should not be permanently disqualified from all cases since the bias allegations concerned only some cases which had yet to start.
Established in 2002 to try those most responsible for a conflict which claimed nearly 200,000 lives, the court is a hybrid between a UN tribunal and a Sierra Leonean court, which is supposed to avoid the delays which have plagued the international tribunals dealing with the Balkans and Rwanda.
Before being appointed to the court Mr Robertson, a leading human rights lawyer, denounced the Revolutionary United Front in his book Crimes Against Humanity – The Struggle for Global Justice. In a chapter titled Lessons from Sierra Leone, he referred to the rebels’ ”grotesque crimes against humanity” and ”devilish tortures” which included chopping off limbs.
The book said the scale of the atrocities amounted to a crime against humanity which must never be forgiven sufficiently for the RUF to be given a slice of power. ”On the contrary, its leaders deserve to be captured and put on trial.”
Human rights organisations and many Sierra Leoneans have voiced similar sentiments, but defence lawyers said Robertson should not have been appointed to the court, whose judges were supposed to be impartial, just months after the book’s second edition was published.
Three of the nine defendants belonged to the RUF and another three to an allied group, the AFRC. All deny crimes against humanity.
Although they were not named in the book, defence lawyers argued their guilt had been prejudged. Prosecutors in effect backed the defence application to disqualify the president by saying there was ”an appearance of bias”.
In what observers said was a tight but narrow argument, Robertson said that under court rules a judge accused of bias could be challenged to withdraw from a particular case — but not all of them.
”I do not think it right to respond to a request to ‘withdraw’ … it would be a precedent for undermining judicial independence, a value without which no court can function,” he said.
Sulaiman Banja Tejan-Sie, a defence lawyer, said the QC’s submission was technically brilliant but a low point in a great career. ”Robertson is a hero of mine, but the honourable thing would have been to go.” Another lawyer said it was ”sad” that such a towering figure of international jurisprudence should seek refuge in the technicality of rules which he had helped draft.
The three appeal judges — an Austrian, a Nigerian and a Sierra Leonean — will resume the hearing this morning.
If Robertson is forced out it would be a humiliating end to what should have been a career highlight and could force the court to review procedures which the president had drafted. Trials are due to start in May.
Court officials speculated that Robertson would not have fought to keep his job without getting the nod from his fellow judges. But others said he was a loner who needed no such encouragement. – Guardian Unlimited Â