Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
HAGUE INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS: International Criminal Courts and Tribunals: Symposium: Expertise, Uncertainty, and International Law (Part 2)
* Professor of International and Criminal Law, Birmingham Law School [
].
1.
Introduction
The use of witness evidence in international criminal tribunals is widespread. Not necessarily because it is always the best evidence available, but in part because of the other aims and objectives that have been, rightly or wrongly, placed at the door of international criminal law.1Victims and witnesses are frequently called as it is thought that testifying before such tribunals will provide some form of catharsis for them.2This, plus the fact that they provide some level of theatre in what can be something of a technocratic process. Speaking of analogous domestic trials, in Argentina, Kathryn Sikkink commented that witness evidence 'was drama of the highest level and [the witnesses] were eloquent players'.3Furthermore, judges and other actors at the ICTY have reported that it is witness testimony that has stayed with them the most.4
This is perhaps unsurprising. In many ways, witness evidence is the human face of international criminal law. However, humans being what they are, they come in all shapes and sizes, with different needs, wishes, and agendas. Victim witnesses are decidedly different than perpetrator (or accomplice) witnesses (although there are some, such as child soldiers, who can be considered both),5and expert witnesses are a separate category entirely. All have been before international criminal tribunals, and raise different issues.
It would not be possible to undertake a comprehensive empirical study of the issues that witness evidence has given rise to in international criminal tribunals in less than a multi-volume set of monographs.6Furthermore, the legal framework in which witness evidence is presented is not the primary focus of this piece; the legal framework has been discussed elsewhere.7The focus of this piece is the problem of witness tampering and the difficulties that have attended the responses to this problem in a disaggregated international legal system.
By witness tampering, this article means threats, both express and implicit, to witnesses and/or their families, as well as bribes or other inducements. It is possible that each of these raises slightly...