ANALYSIS-Pressure on ICC to perform as prepares first trial
Source: Reuters
By Emma Thomasson AMSTERDAM, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The world's first permanent warcrimes court is under heavy pressure to deliver a first conviction, establishing its authority and helping to break resistance of both governments and rebel groups to its activity. The International Criminal Court, still lacking U.S. support four years after it was set up, announced on Monday it was opening its first trial, against a Congolese militiaman accused of recruiting children for conflict. For many it is an acid test of the court's ability to gather evidence and to act on it. "The ICC is not going to be effective until it has some convictions under its belt and sends the fear of God into people," said Nicholas Grono of the International Crisis Group, the Brussels-based think tank. "This is the big year. We're now at the stage where results need to be happening." The ICC says it has enough evidence against militia leader Thomas Lubanga to go to trial, probably later in 2007. "They'll be relieved to be getting this trial under way. It has been quite slow moving but then it is a new institution with difficult cases. It's a momentous task," said Anne McMillan of the International Bar Association that represents lawyers. The ICC is now supported by 104 nations and has grown to employ more than 600 people who are already facing space constraints in temporary premises on the outskirts of The Hague. Militiaman Thomas Lubanga is the only suspect in the court's custody. Along with the Democratic Republic of Congo, the ICC is also investigating crimes in Uganda and Sudan's Darfur, but has so far only indicted rebels -- Lubanga and five leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army, behind a 20-year insurgency in Uganda. DARFUR DILEMMA Observers say its next real challenge will be to go after those in power. Almost two years after the U.N. Security Council asked him to investigate atrocities in Darfur, ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has promised charges in February. Goran Sluiter, international law expert at Amsterdam University, said Moreno-Ocampo needs to raise pressure on Sudan over Darfur, where at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been displaced in fighting since 2003. "The prosecutor must be more severe and order Sudan to cooperate," Sluiter said. Grono of the International Crisis Group said a muscular approach on Sudan could help win over more U.S. critics. "It's very much up to the ICC to prove itself," he said. "We hope they proceed against one or two relatively senior government figures." The United States opposed the founding of the ICC, fearing it would be used for what it saw as politically motivated prosecutions; but Darfur marked a turning point. Washington, which calls the violence there genocide, refrained from blocking a Security Council referral in March 2005. Since then, Washington has quietly ended a policy of aid sanctions against ICC member states, perhaps encouraged by the court's decision not to pursue allegations of U.S. crimes in Iraq, noting national proceedings had already been initiated. Although the U.S. Senate is unlikely to sign up any time soon, Washington could give its tacit support to investigations. While China and Russia remain outside the court, Japan could help rally Asian support if it joins as expected this year. "The prosecutor at the ICC has tried to bend over backwards to make the court look innocuous to the United States," said Gary Bass, associate politics professor at Princeton University. "The court hasn't functioned in a politicised way." EXPAND HORIZONS? By concentrating on Africa, Bass said the ICC has avoided antagonising the big powers. That, however, might change it if indicts senior figures in the Sudanese government, a close ally of China. But it will have to expand its remit soon. "I've heard it jokingly called the European Court for Africa. There is a risk with this entire focus on Africa. What about Columbia? They should expand their horizon," Sluiter said. While the court has sought to learn the lessons of other ad-hoc war crimes tribunals and limit the scope of indictments -- ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died in jail four years into his marathon trial -- it is under pressure to expand charges against Lubanga beyond recruitment of child soldiers. "Our major concern in the Lubanga arrest warrant is that it doesn't reflect any of the killing, or the torture, or the sexual violence," said Geraldine Mattioli of Human Rights Watch. Prosecutors have said they will defer investigation of other charges until after Lubanga's first trial, but plan more arrest warrants against another militia group in Congo soon. They are also considering opening an investigation into a fourth country.
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