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The Sierra Leone tribunal has jurisdiction, but Bush said the United States is working to have Taylor tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Amnesty International on Charles Taylor
Washington, D.C. (Liberian Times) March 30 — U.S. President George W. Bush has thrown the strongest hint yet that former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, who was captured in near the Nigeria-Cameroun border Wednesday may face trial at the Hague in The Netherlands.
Discussing Democracy in Iraq with Freedom House in Washington, D.C., the U.S. president said he was much more confident today than he was yesterday that Taylor would be tried before an International tribunal.
“This is what we call embedding. I talked to the President (Olesegun Obasanjo) about a variety of things, one of which, of course, was Charles Taylor. There is a process to get Charles Taylor to the court in the Netherlands,” said Bush.
Bush said such a process will require a United Nations Security Council resolution. “Secretary Rice, who was in the meeting, told me that she thought that might happen relatively quickly. And so, therefore, I think he is headed for where he belongs, which is trial.”
FREETOWN, Sierre Leone (Reuters) March 30 — Court President Justice A. Raja N. Fernando wants the trial switched to the Hague, where it could use the modern facilities of the new International Criminal Court (ICC).
The request cited fears the trial of Taylor, who still has supporters in neighboring Liberia, could provoke unrest in both of the small and war-ravaged west African states.
Court chief prosecutor Desmond de Silva stressed it was just a change of venue and it would “be the Special Court for Sierra Leone sitting in The Hague.”
The Dutch Foreign Ministry and the ICC were considering the request made on Wednesday, the day Taylor was delivered by U.N. forces to Freetown after being deported from Nigeria.
Newly elected Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has said Taylor should not face justice in a “hostile” venue, on Thursday also backed a move “to a more conducive environment such as … The Hague.”
July 2003 - Demonstrators demand Taylor's
departure from Liberia (AP)
Since coming into office in 2001, the Bush administration has consistently opposed to having the International Criminal Court (ICC), based in The Hague, hold US military and political leaders to a uniform global standard of justice.
The ICC is the only international court to try individuals accused of the worst violations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity when national courts are destroyed or unable to handle the case, or are deliberately shielding the accused from justice.
Although the ICC is in line with the wingnuttery’s declared “American values” of accountability, equality and justice, BushCo argues that the court, could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions of U.S. troops.
Talk about the double standard, we dictate that other countries need the highest standards of fairness and judicial process, but when it comes to us – torture is the new American way.
Wed Apr 27th, 2005 at 09:26:44 AM PST
… the Council of Europe condemned the United States for torturing terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The Council of Europe is made up of three main institutions:
European Court of Human Rights
Commissioner for Human Rights
Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe
You can learn about their history, mission, and structure here.
GENEVA (AP) March 30 — The United Nations’ special investigator of torture said he is certain there are secret U.S. prisons in Europe and he wants access to them.
Manfred Nowak said he has proof secret U.S. prisons continue to operate in Europe. “I am 100 per cent sure. I have evidence,” Nowak said in an interview. He cited a U.S. refusal to provide details or records of interrogations later used in terrorism trials in Germany.
- BBC Hard Talk :: Stephen Sackur talks to Manfred Nowak, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, who recently met British Home Secretary Charles Clarke. Is the war on terror raising new concerns?
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
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There is such hypocrisy in sending others into a court that you have declared beneath your own country. Charles Taylor, of course, deserves to be tried where his crimes can be most thoroughly condemned and fairly weighed. But Bush is the last person to push for action in a court whose legitimacy he rejected.
It is, of course, another example of his following those laws, standards, agreements, treaties, etc. that he wants to follow, only when he wants to follow them, but freely choosing to ignore and violate them at will.
It’s disgusting to see Bush pontificate about the ICC.
My only question, though, is can Pat Roberston go with him, too? (It is a crying shame that only Colbert King is the only one who covered this link between Robertson and Taylor nationally in a sustained way.)
I was flabbergasted when Robertson first defended Taylor, and then had his financial links to Taylor’s regime revealed. I think it was on page zillion and one in most of the MSM! So, of course, that being “old news”, no one would consider it worthy of comment now.
Without being too pedantic, the trial will not be held by the International Criminal Court but in a Special Tribunal that has already been set up. This is a move of venue from West Africa to use the buildings and facilities of the ICC. The nearest analogy is the use of Dutch courts’ facilities for the trials of the Lockerbie defendants’ trial. Those were trials under Scottish Law and procedures which just happened to take place in the Netherlands. The Libyans agreed to surrender the suspects under this arrangement as the trial woudl be seen to be more independant.
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The UN backed Sierra Leone War Crimes court will be set up in The Hague at the ICC.
In the case of the Lockerbie trials, a Scottish court was set up in the former facility of a U.S. Air Force base at Soest for security reason. For the duration of the trial, the special security building was declared Scotland’s sovereign territory.
The bombing of Pan-Am flight 103 above Lockerbie caused the deaths of 270 people. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was convicted of smuggling a bomb aboard the New York-bound flight on 21 December, 1988.
The former Libyan intelligence officer was found guilty after a trial by a specially convened Scottish court at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands. His co-accused, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, was acquitted.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
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Oh, I see. I did not read carefully enough, a mistake that others will make as well. 🙂