Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on April 17, 2007
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2007 5(2):258-263; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqm011
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Editorial Comments |
The Iraqi High Tribunal
A Viable Experiment in International Justice?
*Professor of Law and Director of the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center, Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In 2004–2005, M. Scharf was part of the international team assembled by the International Bar Association which provided training to the judges of the Iraqi High Tribunal. In 2006, he led the first training session for the judges and prosecutors of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. He is the co-author of Saddam on Trial: Understanding and Debating the Iraqi High Tribunal (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2006), available at: http://www.cap-press.com/books/1625. [ mps17{at}case.edu]
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Abstract |
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The Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT) joins the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo as the first of a new breed of accountability mechanisms which the author characterizes as ‘internationalized-domestic tribunals’. Unfortunately, the IHT faced world-wide opposition from its conception, and once the Dujail trial began, the proceedings were marred by the assassination of defence counsel, the resignation of judges, the boycott of defence lawyers, the disruptive conduct of the defendants and finally by a botched execution that was universally condemned. But judged in light of the unique challenges that the IHT faced, the fact that there were no feasible alternatives available for trying Saddam Hussein, and that war crimes trials are historically divisive and messy, the IHT cannot simply be written off as an utter failure. Rather, an objective assessment of the IHT would have to acknowledge that there were in fact some positive aspects as well, which are described in this essay written by one of the experts who trained the judges that presided over the Saddam Hussein Trial.