PhD studies in human rights: Naomi Campbell at the Specail Court for Sierra Leone?

Monday 7 June 2010

Naomi Campbell at the Specail Court for Sierra Leone?

The Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone has applied to reopen her case, which closed more than a year ago, in order to call model Naomi Campbell and actress Mia Farrow as witnesses. It is alleged that while in South Africa in 1997, where the three were guests of Nelson Mandela, Charles Taylor gave Naomi Campbell an uncut diamond. Campbell has denied this in the past, and recently punched a journalist who asked her about the matter. See the video (won't she be fun to cross-examine!). Mia Farrow claims she that Campbell told her about this at breakfast.
The Prosecutor says this will constitute 'direct evidence of the accused's possession of rough diamonds from a witness unrelated to the Liberian or Sierra Leone conflicts'.

Taylor's defence counsel, Courtenay Griffiths, is challenging the motion. 'For the prosecution to present such inferential evidence at this advanced stage, as part of an obvious publicity stunt, would bring the administration of justice into serious disrepute,' he said in his reply to the motion.
What I find quite astonishing is that the Prosecutor closed the case more than a year ago without adequate evidence that Charles Taylor was in possession of raw diamonds. After all, this is a big part of the lore about the Liberian conflict. Is the Prosecutor really so dependent upon last-minute evidence from a volatile super-model, who in the past has denied this, but whose credibility could then be attacked by a movie star.
And what did Campbell do with this famous diamond? She says she gave it away to a charity in South Africa. Really? But apparently the alleged charity denies it. The Prosecutor has an explanation: Campbell k new it would be illegal to take an uncut diamond out of the country, so she gave it away, but then the charity is afraid to admit having received it because of the legal consequences. And all of this not to prove an issue that is central to the case against Taylor, but a seriously tangential matter.
Maybe they should also subpoena Nelson Mandela ot see what he knows about the matter.

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William A. Schabas is professor of international law at Middlesex University in London. He is also professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University, emeritus professor human rights law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights of the National University of Ireland Galway, and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in Beijing and Wuhan University. He is the author of more than 20 books and 300 journal articles, on such subjects as the abolition of capital punishment, genocide and the international criminal tribunals. Professor Schabas was a member of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the United Nations Voluntary Fund for Technical Cooperation in Human Rights and president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. He serves as president of the Irish Branch of the International Law Association chair of the Institute for International Criminal Investigation. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Here is the full c.v.

Dr Yvonne McDermott is Senior Lecturer in Law at Bangor University, UK, where she is also Director of Teaching and Learning and Co-Director of the Bangor Centre for International Law. Yvonne is a graduate of the National University of Ireland, Galway (B. Corp. Law, LL.B.), Leiden University (LL.M. cum laude) and the Irish Centre for Human Rights (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on fair trial rights, international criminal procedure and international criminal law. She is the author of Fairness in International Criminal Trials (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Niamh Hayes has been the Head of Office for the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI) in The Hague since September 2012. She is about to complete her Ph.D. on the investigation and prosecution of sexual violence by international criminal tribunals at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. She previously worked for Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice as a legal consultant, and as an intern for the defence at the ICTY in the Karadzic case. She has lectured on international criminal law and international law at Trinity College Dublin and, along with Prof. William Schabas and Dr. Yvonne McDermott, is a co-editor of The Ashgate Research Companion to International Criminal Law: Critical Perspectives (Ashgate, 2013). She is the author of over 45 case reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on the investigation and prosecution of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.

Joseph Powderly is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Between September 2008 and January 2010, he was a Doctoral Fellow/Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, where he worked, among other projects, on a Irish Government-funded investigation and report into the possible perpetration of crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people of North Rakhine State, Burma/Myanmar. He is currently in the process of completing his doctoral research which looks at the impact of theories of judicial interpretation on the development of international criminal and international humanitarian law. The central thesis aims to identify and analyze the potential emergence of a specific theory of interpretation within the sphere of judicial creativity. Along with Dr. Shane Darcy of the Irish Centre for Human Rights, he is co-editor of and contributor to the edited collection Judicial Creativity in International Criminal Tribunals which was published by Oxford University Press in 2010. He has written over 80 case-reports for the Oxford Reports on International Criminal Law, as well as numerous book chapters and academic articles on topics ranging from the principle of complementarity to Irish involvement in the drafting of the Geneva Conventions. In December 2010, he was appointed Managing Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Criminal Law Forum. His research interests while focusing on international criminal and international humanitarian law also include topics such as the history of international law and freedom of expression.

PhD studies in human rights

Monday 7 June 2010

Naomi Campbell at the Specail Court for Sierra Leone?

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