Prosecution of War Crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
AbstractThe author is not concerned with the correctness nor the wisdom of the decisions made by the International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda. Rather he concentrates on the jurisprudence of how such prosecutions could be more successfully done. He expounds on the principles of law in the context of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Hutus against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Due emphasis is laid on judicial activism (an expansive or liberal approach) which he commends for the interpretation of s.4 of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Statute. For a successful prosecution of war criminals, he contends that a nexus (causal link) between the internal armed conflict in Rwanda and the war crimes committed by the accused persons must be unequivocably established by the Prosecution. This nexus, he justifies, must rightly be a "concept", a preconceived idea or thought (an end-result of the conceptualisation process) rather than a "conception" of ideas which is yet formative and everchanging in nature. An adoption of the latter meaning of "nexus" could unfairly prejudice the trial of the war criminals. |