Will the International Criminal Court deliver justice to Libya?
On November 22 the chief prosecutor of the International criminal Court flew into Tripoli in perhaps the last Highway act of his career. He and his deputy, a Gambian lawyer, began haggling over the fate of two men who are wanted in more than one place. The son of the late Libyan dictator who has just been arrested while trying to flee to Nigeria and a former Libyan spymaster.
On the Libyan street there is a palpable desire to see the two men hanged. The new Libyan authorities are assisting in that they are capable of staging fair trials. The first of the defendants had first argued that a prior claim belong to the International criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the two men and at the behest of the United Nations security council in June. But on November 23 through doubting whether one of the defendants really have been arrested he accepted that Libyan courts could give the younger defendant a decent hearing. He added that the International criminal Court, in its capacity as the court of last resort, would help if needed.
From the suspect's viewpoint, the deliberate enquiry by the International criminal Court in The Hague with a chance to defend themselves and no death penalty on the statute book, would be preferable to a trial in a vengeful atmosphere at home. The International criminal Court trial would have limitations. The charges drawn up by the prosecutor pertain only to misdeeds committed since the previous year, when civil war escalated and the UN called in court as one of the many instruments designed to thwart the regime. UN could in theory authorise a broader probe, but the court can never look into anything that happened before its doors open to thousand two. Stood trial in The Hague could not investigate the downing of a 1988 American passenger plane over Scotland, or the killing of 1200 inmates in Libyan jail in 1996.
some institutional interests are at stake. Living case would have crossed the court at last into the limelight, confining its role as a place where victims of the worst misdeeds and crimes which might otherwise go unpunished can seek restitution. Set against utopian predictions made in 1998 when the Rome Statute providing the court was signed, the record so far has been rather disappointing. The court was destined, said one campaigner for its creation to save millions of humans from suffering unspeakably horrible and inhumane death. Of course, it's existence may have had some would-be dealers of death hold back that such extravagant claims are hard to sustain.
On the Libyan street there is a palpable desire to see the two men hanged. The new Libyan authorities are assisting in that they are capable of staging fair trials. The first of the defendants had first argued that a prior claim belong to the International criminal Court, which issued arrest warrants for the two men and at the behest of the United Nations security council in June. But on November 23 through doubting whether one of the defendants really have been arrested he accepted that Libyan courts could give the younger defendant a decent hearing. He added that the International criminal Court, in its capacity as the court of last resort, would help if needed.
From the suspect's viewpoint, the deliberate enquiry by the International criminal Court in The Hague with a chance to defend themselves and no death penalty on the statute book, would be preferable to a trial in a vengeful atmosphere at home. The International criminal Court trial would have limitations. The charges drawn up by the prosecutor pertain only to misdeeds committed since the previous year, when civil war escalated and the UN called in court as one of the many instruments designed to thwart the regime. UN could in theory authorise a broader probe, but the court can never look into anything that happened before its doors open to thousand two. Stood trial in The Hague could not investigate the downing of a 1988 American passenger plane over Scotland, or the killing of 1200 inmates in Libyan jail in 1996.
some institutional interests are at stake. Living case would have crossed the court at last into the limelight, confining its role as a place where victims of the worst misdeeds and crimes which might otherwise go unpunished can seek restitution. Set against utopian predictions made in 1998 when the Rome Statute providing the court was signed, the record so far has been rather disappointing. The court was destined, said one campaigner for its creation to save millions of humans from suffering unspeakably horrible and inhumane death. Of course, it's existence may have had some would-be dealers of death hold back that such extravagant claims are hard to sustain.
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