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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2017
Are historians or other country specialists needed in the investigation and prosecution of crimes under international law? Experiences at international tribunals, from the Nuremberg Trials to the present, offer different answers to this question. This article argues that country specialists are indispensable and demonstrates how, time and again, in international or national settings, practical necessities have led to structural models in which lawyers, investigators and country specialists work together. A ‘best practices’ model for interdisciplinary investigations adopted by a group of national and international prosecution units is presented in detail. When creating new international tribunals, the UN did not incorporate this model. What is needed for future tribunals is a structural framework of the Office of the Prosecutor, which includes country specialists.
1 This organization still exists, even as the name has been changed several times. The Polish commission is different from other national units, as a research and archival center are linked to the investigative body. It has not been established why this unconventional structure was chosen; e-mail to author, Wlodzimierz Borodziej, 23 May 2007. See, Borodziej, W., ‘“Hitleristische Verbrechen”. Die Ahndung deutscher Kriegs- und Besatzungsverbrechen in Polen’, in Frei, N. (ed.), Transnationale Vergangenheitspolitik. Der Umgang mit deutschen Kriegsverbrechern in Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (2006)Google Scholar. The book by Frei offers an overview of national postwar Nazi prosecutions.
2 J. Herz, Vom Überleben. Wie ein Weltbild entstand. Autobiographie (1984), 140.
3 This episode is, in part, based on the personal recollections of the author. The Central Agency is somewhat of an anomaly among Nazi prosecution units. There had been numerous investigations and prosecutions of Nazi crimes in West Germany, but a 1958 trial lead to the realization that Nazi crimes committed outside of Germany in the occupied East had not been sufficiently investigated; see A. Rückerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht. Versuch einer Vergangenheitsbewältigung (1982).
Streim's attempts to draw public attention to this structural flaw were followed by requests to his superiors to change the structures and create, at least, one job for a historian. This was denied for fiscal reasons. Traditionally, there were no historians on the budget plan of German prosecution offices and, it was argued, there would be no use for them once Nazi investigations were over. Alfred Streim, Head of Central Agency to Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry, 16 July 1991; Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry to Baden-Württemberg Finance Ministry, 9 April 1992; Baden-Württemberg Finance Ministry to Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry, 20 May 1992; Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry to Central Agency, 12 July 1992; Central Agency annual reports dated 8 July 1992, 2 July 1993, 11 July 1994, all: Justice Ministry, file 220 ZSL-178. The author wishes to thank the Baden-Württemberg Justice Ministry for making these documents available.
4 There were personal continuities between the Nuremberg Military Trials and OSI. The first director of OSI, Walter Rockler, had been a prosecutor in Nuremberg and was influenced by this experience. Two other members of the Nuremberg prosecution staff worked at OSI. Telephone interview, Peter Black, 25 January 2008. Dr. Black joined the INS Special Litigation Unit in 1978 and moved with the Agency over to the Criminal Division when it was renamed OSI in 1979. Chief Historian at OSI 1989–1997, in 1997 Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
5 The author's own work took place in this period, as a researcher and consultant for OSI, CAHWC and SIU from 1986 till 1991, and Chief Historian of CAHWC from 1991 till 2005.
6 When the ICTY was set up in 1993, SIU and the Scottish Unit had just been closed down and several of their former members – as well as others from OSI and CAHWC – joined the new tribunal.
7 Here, and in the following, ‘country specialist’ is used as a general term to include historians, political scientists or ethnologists, in short anybody who has acquired factual and linguistic expertise about a country through academic research and analysis, not personal background.
8 The term does not cover all legal provisions which were used in the prosecution of criminal regimes. For example, German prosecutions of Nazi crimes are conducted according to the German penal code.
9 A questionnaire was used asking about: creation and structure of the organization concerned, structural changes, functioning of the organization, evaluation of the efficiency of the organization. As is evident from the dates of interviews, this project was started in 2007/2008 but, due to other projects, only finished in 2015.
10 Telephone interview, Peter Black, 25 January 2008.
11 Ibid.
12 Until 1977, Nazi cases were handled by the INS (deportation) and regional US Attorney's Offices (denaturalization) with a mixed success rate. In 1977, the INS established a central office in Washington, the Special Litigation Unit (SLU). Then in 1979, the unit was transferred into the Department of Justice (DOJ) Criminal Division, and renamed OSI; Telephone interview, Peter Black, 25 January 2008; Telephone interview, Elisabeth White, 5 May 2008. Dr. White joined OSI in 1981, from 1997 on she was Chief Historian, from 2004 on Deputy Director. In 2012 she joined the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
13 Black lists the following tasks for historians: conducting investigations overseas in foreign archives, identifying and questioning of foreign witnesses, assisting attorneys in preparing for witness interviews and in preparing expert witnesses for testimony, ensuring that all relevant evidence was submitted; e-mail, Peter Black, 21 October 2015.
14 Telephone interview, Peter Black, 25 January 2008.
15 This was the result of consultations with the existing units. On CAHWC: E-mail to author, Christopher Amerasinghe, 22 December 2007. Mr. Amerasinghe was Senior General Counsel in CAHWC from 1987 to 1996. In 1987, he was the only Canadian lawyer with experience with Nazi crimes, because of a 1982 extradition case. He was instrumental in setting CAHWC up. On SIU: E-Mails to author, Konrad Kwiet, 25 November 2007, 14 January 2008. Dr. Kwiet was the Senior Historian of SIU throughout its existence. The Scottish unit consulted CAHWW and SIU, but did not directly adopt the OSI model. On the British and Scottish units: Personal interview, Gavin Ruxton, Den Haag, 31 January 2008. Mr. Ruxton was head of the Scottish Unit 1991–1993, at ICTY from 1993 to 2010 in various leading positions, finally as Chief of Prosecutions.
16 Personal interview, Gavin Ruxton, Den Haag, 31 January 2008.
17 E-mail to author, Konrad Kwiet, 14 January 2008.
18 E-mail to author, Christopher Amerasinghe, 22 December 2007.
19 Telephone interview, Christopher Amerasinghe, 31 January 2008. According to former Senior General Counsel Christopher Amerasinghe the intransigence of the RCMP led to infighting between Justice personnel and police, which was detrimental to the efficiency of the Canadian War Crimes Program and it took years to rectify the situation. In Amerasinghe's view, the section was run most efficiently from 1990 to 1995, due to strong leadership on the side of DOJ. But afterwards, and with respect to modern-time crimes, the best division of labour could not be maintained.
20 CAHWC used country specialists for both, Second World War and modern international crimes. Canada was, from the beginning, given a mandate not confined to Nazi crimes, but including modern conflicts as well. White confirms the transfer of OSI to a modern period law enforcement body; Telephone interview, Elizabeth White, 5 May 2008. In 2010, OSI was merged with the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Sections within the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.
21 These contractors are different from experts testifying in court, who should be independent academics of high standing.
22 Hiring PhDs has another benefit, as the written work of job applicants allows an insight into how they think about the conflicts under investigation and, consequently, the work of the section. Probing such issues cannot be done during a job interview, but the issue is important.
23 As a rule, this takes one year for the basic training; after another year, people should be ready to independently make a contribution. This investment in on-the-job training is a trade-off against the five to ten years of academic and linguistic training which country specialists bring to a section.
24 Access to archives abroad had to be negotiated beforehand by the director through diplomatic means.
25 For example, the bulk of documents for Nazi cases was in Soviet archives, which had not been open to independent scholars. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, access was possible, but one had to piece together the structure of these archives, in particular KGB archives, and to find a way to evaluate them most effectively. This was a lengthy process – and not much different for modern cases. High-profile archival holdings are likely to have previously been off-limits. However, scholars working on earlier time periods or on not very sensitive subjects might have gained access and could be consulted about how archives in a particular country are structured. Equally important is to understand how documents were created in a given regime. Often the most important records – for example, of police units – had been destroyed to conceal crimes. However, knowledge about practices of distribution of documents can assist to locate information. For example, membership in a police unit can be confirmed through administrative or financial records, which were consider too harmless to destroy. The key document in one Nazi era case was a sugar distribution list. One also has to consider all sorts of sources, including non-written ones.
26 To protect the integrity of the investigations, ICTY initially did not allow the hiring of nationals of the conflict states, out of fear of infiltration, Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. The problem of potential bias can also manifest itself with interpreters, who are chosen solely for their language proficiency, but can have a considerable influence on the people they work with, in particular during field trips, because they do not only interpret language, but convey an understanding of the country, its culture and even the conflict itself.
27 This has been called the ‘tripartite model’, consisting of team leaders for the legal, investigation, analysis section, all equal under a chief prosecutor/director, Fujiwara, H. and Parmentier, S., ‘Investigations’, in Reydams, L., Wouters, J. and Ryngaert, C. (eds.), International Prosecutors (2012), 572 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 592.
28 See, Blewitt, G., ‘The Importance of a Retributive Approach to Justice’, in Blumenthal, D. and McCormack, T. (eds.), The Legacy of Nuremberg: Civilizing Influence or Institutionalized Vengeance? (2008), 39 Google Scholar.
29 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008.
30 Blewitt was not even aware that he had a P4 position, Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. Treanor was up-graded to a P 4 position later, see structure in Townsend, G., ‘Structure and Management’, in Reydams, L., Wouters, J. and Ryngaert, C. (Eds.), International Prosecutors (2012), 171 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 233.
31 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. Larry Johnson, formerly with the Office of Legal Affairs, confirms that at this time nobody at the UN had any experience with international courts; E-mail to author, Larry Johnson, 21 July 2014.
32 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. That the history of the conflict had not been researched at this time is supported by Treanor, Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008. Dr. Treanor joined OSI in 1980; from 1994 till 2009 he was Research Officer at ICTY.
33 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. In the first period, Gavin Ruxton saw some justification in police investigators taking the lead, because initially the work consisted of finding witnesses or conducting exhumations; Personal interview, Gavin Ruxton, Den Haag, 31 January 2008.
34 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008. In addition, the tribunal was not only a new organization, but also a big one. Treanor stresses the impact of size on structure. He considered the OSI structure more efficient, but this was facilitated by the fact that it was a smaller office; Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008.
Blewitt's recollections are supported in many points in articles by former ICTY personnel, published ten years later; see Harmon, M. and Gaynor, F., ‘Prosecuting Massive Crimes with Primitive Tools: Three Difficulties Encountered by Prosecutors in International Criminal Proceedings’, (2004) 2 JICJ 403 Google Scholar;
Schrag, M., ‘Lessons Learned from ICTY Experience’, (2004) 2 JICJ 427 Google Scholar;
Pantz, S., ‘From Bosnia to Kosovo and to Bosnia Again’, (2004) 2 JICJ 459 Google Scholar.
35 Initially, Treanor had been hired as an investigator; Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008.
36 Townsend, supra note 30, at 233.
37 Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008. Internally, the title Senior Research Officer was used. Treanor points out that at ICTY he never acquired a position comparable to that of a deputy director at OSI.
38 Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008; Personal interview, Philip Coo, Den Haag, 26 June 2014. Mr. Coo was at MAT from 1999-2008, from 2004 as Team Leader. Personal Interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 9 July 2015. Dr. William Tomljanovich joined the LRT at ICTY in 1999. There is a debate whether historians should be in separate units or integrated into investigation teams. According to Blewitt, one historian per team would have been ideal, but because of lack of resources the second-best solution was to create two teams, which could assist all legal teams. Ruxton considers the centralized units should have been integrated into teams. Coo sees advantages in an independent unit, which for example, facilitates the ability to freely share ideas, exercise quality control and mentor less experienced colleagues. It also allows for an experienced analyst acting in the capacity of team leader of an analysis team to ensure investigations and trial teams are provided with coordinated analytical support, with professional advice on how best to employ analysts; E-mail to author, Philip Coo, 27 June 2014.
39 Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008. Scholar Richard Wilson describes this in the following way: ‘Treanor sought out professionals with regional expertise who could speak the local languages and could read documents directly without the need for translation. He sought out professionals with appropriate training, and a sizeable percentage of LRT staff had graduate degrees, mostly in history and the social sciences’; R.A. Wilson, Writing History in International Criminal Trials (2011), 81.
40 Wilson, ibid., at 81.
41 Personal interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 5 July 2014.
42 R. Petit, D. Akerson and M. Warren (eds.), Prosecuting Mass Atrocities. Lessons from the International Tribunals. A compendium of lessons learned and suggested practices from the offices of the prosecutors. ICTY, ICTR, SCSL, ECCC, STL. Launched at the 17th Annual Conference of the International Association of Prosecutors, 1 November 2012, at 13. In possession of author.
43 E-mail to author, Philip Coo, 19 October 2014; Personal interview, Philip Coo, Den Haag, 26 June 2014. For MAT a military background was required, unless, in rare instances, the work was of a more general nature and carried out under the guidance of an analyst with military experience. The MAT team leaders were always former military officers. Some people at LRT bore the title ‘Research Officer’, others ‘Intelligence Analysts’ but they might perform the same work. Levels of education and pay grade were not necessarily correlated. Titles had to be adapted to the limited choice of titles in existence at the UN; E-mail to author, William Tomljanovich, 8 October 2014.
A former Team Leader of MAT, Peter Nicholson, makes a distinction between country specialists, who might be biased, and analysts who ‘apply an approach to any analytical task’ and, thereby, achieve objective results; P. Nicholson, ‘The Function of Analysis and the Role of the Analyst within the Prosecutor's Office of an International Criminal Court’, Contribution to an expert consultation process on general issues relevant to the ICC Office of the Prosecutor, 13 February 2003, available at asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/library/organs/otp/Nicholson.pdf (accessed 17 February 2008), at 10. This distinction is artificial and disregards the fact that a good part of historical academic training is the critical review of sources in order to arrive at objective conclusions.
44 Del Ponte, C., Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity (2008), 126–9Google Scholar. This is echoed by Sylvie Pantz, who, while an ICTY investigations commander from 1996–1999, was by background a French juge d'instruction. This again highlights the common – civil law divide, Pantz, supra note 34.
45 Telephone Interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008; Personal interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 9 July 2014. Investigators for police forces would typically be more familiar with the work of criminal analysts and less knowledgeable about the potential value of the other categories of analysts they might be exposed to in international courts. However, competent investigators were needed to conduct interviews properly, historians were not trained to do this; Personal interview, Philip Coo, Den Haag, 26 June 2014; e-mail to author, Philip Coo, 19 October 2014.
46 Personal interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 9 July 2014; e-mail to author, William Tomljanovich, 8 October 2014. A strong Chief Historian/Analyst is also essential for proper quality control of the historical work. Treanor never reached the P 5 level, while several investigators held this rank.
47 Personal interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 9 July 2014; Del Ponte, supra note 44, at 125.
48 Personal interview, Gavin Ruxton, Den Haag, 31 January 2008; Telephone interview, Patrick Treanor, 21 January 2008; Personal interview, William Tomljanovich, Den Haag, 9 July 2014. These documents became available for the first time, therefore ICTY historians had to act as experts and present them to the courts.
49 In her memoirs, Del Ponte writes very negatively about investigators, their level of competence and willingness to learn – in particular from country specialists. Del Ponte, supra note 44, at 122–32. She puts blame on Blewitt for trying to replicate SIU, but ignores the fact that at SIU investigators had to co-operate with historians – something Del Ponte herself advocates.
50 Telephone interview, Graham Blewitt, 3 March 2008; Personal interview, Mohammed A. Lejmi, Den Haag, 20 October 2009. Mr. Lejmi was an analyst at ICTR from 1998 till 2006, from 1999 on as deputy head of the analysis section. From 2006 to 2009 he was deputy director of investigations and external liaison officer at the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC). From 2009 to present, he is at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). See L. Walpen, ‘Quelques considerations sur la direction des enquêtes d'un Tribunal Pénal International’, 13 Mars 2003, contribution to an expert consultation process on general issues relevant to the ICC Office of the prosecutor, available at asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/library/organs/otp/Walpen.pdf, received from Mr. Walpen.
51 E-mail to author, Laurent Walpen, 1 April 2010; Del Ponte, supra note 44, at 133–4.
52 L. Walpen, Directeur des enquêtes, Tribunal Penal International pour le Rwanda, Strategie des investigations, 1.8.2000, received from Mr. Walpen.
53 L. Walpen, ‘La conduit des enquêtes, un défi majeur pour la justice pénale international’, Juillet 2004, in Justice internationale et scolaire: points de repére, received from Mr. Walpen; Walpen, supra note 52. E-mail to author, Laurent Walpen, 1 April 2010. One major difference to the ‘best practices’ model is that investigators collected the material and analysts worked on it after.
54 E-mail to author, Laurent Walpen, 23 June 2010. Many acquired a good knowledge of Rwanda over time, but did not bring this to the job from the beginning.
55 E-mail to author, Laurent Walpen, 23 July 2010; Walpen, supra note 50.
56 Walpen suggested setting up a register of analysts, from which newly created tribunals could pick, which, according to his knowledge, has not been implemented; E-mail to author, Laurent Walpen, 23 June 2010.
57 Personal interview, Mohmamed A. Lejmi, Den Haag, 20 October 2009.
58 Academics specialized in African history were used as experts in court and gave advice to prosecution teams. According to Wilson, ICTR relied heavily on Alison DesForges’ book, which became a sort of official history, Wilson, supra note 39, at 172–3.
59 Job announcements are often written by people, who do not fully understand analysis and the skills and experience required; E-mail to author, Philip Coo, 19 October 2014.
60 Wilson, supra note 39, at 80–6, quote at 80.
61 Wilson, supra note 39; see Wilson, R.A., ‘Judging History: The Historical Record of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’, (2005) 27 Human Rights Quarterly 908 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
62 Wilson, supra note 39, at 189.
63 Wilson, supra note 39, at 223. Wilson is positive about the LRT model, but presumably because he is not aware of the preceding ‘second phase’ units, he wrongly assumes that teams like LRT were a novelty; ibid., at 85–6.
64 A useful overview is provided by Townsend, supra note 30, who also includes charts. The charts indicate only the administrative outlines (like the number of employees with a certain rank), but not necessarily which professional category they belong to. This illustrates the limits of publicly accessible documents on the question.
65 Markus Eikel, a PhD in history, worked as a historian at CAHWC, as an analyst at ICTY and now as an investigator at the ICC; Personal interview, Markus Eikel, Den Haag, 2 January 2008. The fact that people can change from analyst to investigator lessens tensions between the two groups.
66 The Cambodian Genocide Program (CGP) was set up in 1994 at Yale University; in 1997 the Documentation Center of Cambodia was established in Phnom Penh. The literature is extensive. See on the Yale Program B. Kiernan, Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia: Documentation, Denial and Justice in Cambodia and East Timor (2008). On negotiations leading to the court see C. Etcheson, After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide (2005); Etcheson, C., ‘Designing Justice for Cambodia's Khmer Rouge’, in Carey, J., Dunlap, W. and Pritchard, J. (eds.), International Humanitarian Law (2006)Google Scholar, Vol III. On potential defendants see Heder, S., ‘Reassessing the Role of Senior Leaders and Local Officials in Democratic Campuchea Crimes: Cambodian Accountability in Comparative Perspective’, in Ramji, J. and van Schaack, B. (eds.), Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass Violence before the Cambodian Courts (2005)Google Scholar.
67 E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 20 September 2014.
68 E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 20 September 2014; E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
69 E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
70 E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014; E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 11 September 2014.
71 E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
72 Townsend, supra note 30, at 302–3, 306–10.
73 Dr. Stephen Heder was full-time staff at ECCC between 2006 and 2008, and a consultant from 2008 to 2011. Dr. Heder is a Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
74 Dr. Craig Etcheson, formerly at CGP and DC-Cam, was at ECCC from 2006 till 2012. After Etcheson left, OCP was without ‘formally designated investigators, researchers or analysts’; E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
75 E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014; E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 11 September 2014.
76 As Heder puts it, the structure ‘emerged out of small-scale chaos’; E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 11 September 2014. E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014. In the beginning, people had to be switched around a lot. Heder, for example, was seconded to OCP for six months in 2006.
77 E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 11 September 2014; E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
78 E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 20 September 2014. Police reacted particularly negatively to female non-police staff members.
79 E-mail to author, Stephen Heder, 11 September 2014.
80 E-mail to author, Craig Etcheson, 24 July 2014.
81 J. Ciorciari and A. Heindel, Hybrid Justice: The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (2014), 270.
82 See Hamilton, T. and Ramsden, M., ‘The Politicization of Hybrid Courts: Observations from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia’, (2014) 14 International Criminal Law Review 115 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Townsend lists an ‘Intelligence Analysis Group’. This refers to Secret Service Intelligence; Townsend, supra note 30, at 281. ‘Conflict mapping’ done by an NGO (No Peace Without Justice) was considered a sufficient basis for the facts, see Smith, A., ‘The Expectations and Role of International and National Civil Society and the SCSL’, in Jalloh, C.C. (ed.) The Sierra Leone Special Court and its Legacy: The impact for Africa and International Criminal Law (2014), 46 Google Scholar, on mapping at 56–7. This problem is reflected in Jalloh's substantial book, in which every angle of the SCSL is covered, but no other article deals with fact-finding.
84 P. van Tuyl, Effective, Efficient and Fair? An Inquiry into the Investigative Practices of the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, War Crimes Studies Center, University of California Berkeley, September 2008.
85 Ibid., at 12. According to Tuyl, the independence of investigators might have been too great. Tuyl's report deals with investigative practices which led to the abuse of certain fundamental due process rights of the defendants.
86 Ibid., at 13. This view is supported by a high-ranking UN official, Ralph Zacklin, former Assistant Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, see Zacklin, R., ‘The Failings of Ad Hoc Tribunals’, (2004) 2 JICJ 541 Google Scholar. However, a report by Antonio Cassese, commissioned by the UN, shows that this objective was not achieved; see Report on the Special Court for Sierra Leone, Submitted by the Independent Expert Antonio Cassese, 12 December 2006, available at www.rscsl.org/Documents/Cassese%20Report.pdf#search=“Report on the Special Court for Sierra Leone Submitted by the Independent Expert Antonio Cassese” (accessed 13 September 2015).
87 Dufka was in Sierra Leone since 1999, worked for Human Rights Watch and took a year off in 2002-2003 to assist the SCSL; Tuyl, supra note 84, at 41.
88 Ibid., quoting Dufka, at 43.
89 Ibid., quoting Dufka, at 44.
90 Ibid., quoting Dufka, at 44–6.
91 See, for example, the comments by a social anthropologist on transitional justice initiatives in Sierra Leone, like the ‘Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Program’ and the Sierra Leonean Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Through interviews with local people Shaw comes to a much less positive assessment than what was claimed internationally; Shaw, R., ‘Linking Justice with Reintegration? Ex-combatants and the Sierra Leone Experiment’, in Shaw, R., Waldorf, L. and Hazan, P. (eds.), Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities After Mass Violence (2010), 111 Google Scholar; Shaw, R., ‘Memory Frictions: Localizing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone’, (2007) 1 Int. J. Transit. Justice 183 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
92 L. Gberie, The Civil Defense Forces Trial: Limit to International Justice, in Jalloh, supra note 83.
93 Hoffman, D., ‘Citizens and Soldiers: Community Defense in Sierra Leone’, in Gberie, L. (ed.), Rescuing a Fragile State: Sierra Leone 2002-2009 (2009)Google Scholar. See Hoffman, D., ‘The Meaning of a Militia: Understanding the Civil Defense Forces of Sierra Leone’, (2007) 106 African Affairs 639 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. Hoffman, The War Machines: Young Men and Violence in Sierra Leone and Liberia (2011).
94 Hoffman, ‘Citizens and Soldiers’, supra note 93, at 639.
95 T. Kelsall, Culture under Cross-Examination: International Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (2009), Chapters 2, 3, 5. Another issue was the influence of magic thinking, ibid., chapter 4. I. Bantekas, ‘Legal Anthropology and the Construction of Complex Liabilities’, in Jalloh, supra note 83.
96 Bantekas, ibid., at 190.
97 Kelsall, supra note 95, at 256. Similar allegations have been made against the ICC, see, T. Allen, Trial Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Lord's Resistance Army (2006).
98 N.A. Combs, Fact-Finding without Facts: The Uncertain Evidentiary Foundations of International Criminal Convictions (2010), at 172; see Combs, N.A., ‘Testimonial Deficiencies and Evidentiary Uncertainties in International Criminal Trials’, (2009) 14 UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs 235 Google Scholar, at 235.
99 Petit, Akerson and Warren, supra note 42, at 11.
100 Petit, Akerson and Warren, supra note 42, at 2–3, 48–9, 51–5, 61–4, 91–3, 147–8. The necessity of researching any information about a potential witness and the possibility of problems with multiple statements by the same witness are also listed.
101 Petit, Akerson and Warren, supra note 42, at 13–15, 51–2, 55–60, 62–3, 88–9, 144–51, 154–9, 170. One commentary describes the value of country specialists succinctly: ‘Analysts are often world experts on particular issues. They may be amongst the only people to have viewed particular collections of relevant documents and there may be no one outside the tribunals with an equivalent level of highly specialized knowledge and skill’, ibid., at 145.
102 Petit, Akerson and Warren, supra note 42, at 1–2, 19–20, 55–6, 124–31.