The real meaning of the Charles Taylor trial

Please note that this post has been updated and corrected.

The Charles Taylor verdict has come down (guilty of aiding and abetting on all eleven counts), and it has occasioned some confusion in the commentariat about the judicial mechanism by which the former Liberian strongman was actually being tried. That confusion is not unjustified: strangely, the Taylor trial was conducted in the Hague with the support of the International Criminal Court and on the premises of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon but by the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which was created jointly by the government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations. It was decided, probably wisely, that the Taylor case was too hot for the Special Court to handle on its own premises in Freetown.

Insisting on this distinction is not just nitpicking. The Sierra Leone court and the ICC represent quite different models of international justice. The ICC is fully international, with its own prosecutor and complement of judges, who are selected by all court members. The Special Court, by contrast, is an example of hybrid justice and mixes international judges and staff with some from Sierra Leone. The Special Court is just one example of this hybrid model, with others including the Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia and the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These hybrid creations responded in large part to the complaint that fully international justice is too distant from the people and institutions of the countries most affected by atrocities. But they carry with them all sorts of complications and dysfunctionalities (the Cambodia chamber, in particular, has encountered grave problems). What’s more, with the ICC now up and running, there’s an efficiency argument against engaging in more justice ad hocery. 

The Taylor decision is historic of course; it represents the first time [*see correction below] a former head of state has been convicted by a (partially) international tribunal. But it’s been clear for years now that heads of state will not always be immune. Had he not died in his prison cell, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic would have been convicted by the international tribunal created for the former Yugoslavia. And the ICC itself has an arrest warrant outsstanding for Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir (it also issued one for Moammar Gaddafi). The most important outcome from the Sierra Leone court may be the verdict on hybrid justice–and we’re still waiting for that. 

More:  Martin Holterman writes in with a superb catch. Charles Taylor was not actually the first head of state to be convicted by an international court–so too was Nazi Germany’s head of state. Not Adolf Hitler of course, but Karl Dönitz, whom Hitler designated as his successor before he committed suicide. Dönitz was later convicted by the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg.