-----Original Message----- From: International Justice Watch Discussion List [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Daniel Tomasevich Sent: Tuesday, January 22, 2002 5:19 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Arbour says rules shield world's worst criminals
L Arbour doesn't like that national courts have primacy over the ICC. Daniel ------------------------------------------------------------- The Ottawa Citizen January 21, 2002 Monday Canadian judge pans new international court: Arbour says rules shield world's worst criminals BY: David Rider DATELINE: TORONTO With a permanent international court finally set to become reality, a Supreme Court of Canada judge and former war crimes prosecutor is worried governments have been handed a "major trump card" to shield some of the world's worst criminals. Justice Louise Arbour -- an international legal figure who indicted former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic -- told a forum she's deeply concerned that the borderless court will get involved only when a nation is "unwilling" or "unable" to prosecute a case itself. It's fairly easy to determine when a state is unable to try someone for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, said Judge Arbour, who was chief prosecutor for the United Nations tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia until her appointment to Canada's top court in 1999. For example, Rwanda couldn't hold its own genocide trials because few lawyers and judges survived the 1994 massacre. However, under rules of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty drafted at a Canadian-chaired meeting in Rome in 1998, national courts have primacy -- even when the state's leaders are themselves implicated -- and the onus is on international prosecutors to prove that any fraudulent investigations and trials aren't "genuine." A long-standing proponent of a permanent court to judge the worst crimes against civilians, Judge Arbour called the rule a "very, very bad idea." States with relatively developed legal systems will have a "major trump card" to evade justice and will clash with developing countries that don't, she said. "That clash will be intensely political, so I think the reality is that the ICC risks becoming the true default jurisdiction for developing countries, and is buying into major political legal battles with everybody else," she said. A dream of human rights activists since the Second World War, the new court is set to become a fact when 60 countries ratify the Rome treaty. Forty-eight, including Canada, have already done so and the magic number is expected to be reached by about mid-April. However, holdouts include the United States and most observers believe its money and political clout are critical to the court's long-term success. Judge Arbour said the merits of the court's existence are "yesterday's debate" and speculated that the U.S. will become tacitly involved when the UN security council, on which the U.S. sits, refers cases to the new court. "My concern is not that (the court) is too ambitious but that it is not ambitious enough," she said, adding it would be a mistake to build the court on the Canadian judicial template. For example, prosecutors will need more power to protect the safety of witnesses and to get information from state intelligence agencies than they have under the Canadian system. She called the court's development "highly complex, immensely challenging but immensely do-able and, for all these reasons, just."
