Modern Collections
Between 1945 and 1949, many thousands of legal proceedings saw the prosecution of war criminals, almost always from the defeated Axis Powers. Although a large base of precedent was laid, in many ways initiating the field of international criminal law, few similar tribunals would be held in the decades that followed. However, the fall of a significant number of repressive regimes and the establishment of democracy in those countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s revived the concept of international criminal tribunals. Trials for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Lebanon, East Timor, and others were held. These were joined by truth commissions in places such as Chile, Argentina, and South Africa, national-led inquiries into the past that were backed and standardized by the international community. These are the inheritors of the mantle of international justice.
To provide a link between the past and present, as well as to preserve the records and memory of modern-day tribunals, Virtual Tribunals also hosts collections from tribunals of today. Two collections, from East Timor and Lebanon, make up this component of Virtual Tribunals.
Special Panel for Serious Crimes, East Timor
The trials before the Special Panel for Serious Crimes in East Timor form an important part of the ongoing global enterprise aimed at providing accountability for major violations of international humanitarian law. They also provide a historical record of the 1999 violence in East Timor. Although they received scant international media attention while they were being conducted, the jurisprudence of these trials, the historical documentation they contain, and their contribution to contemporary efforts towards achieving international justice, deserve serious public attention.
In October 1999, in response to widespread and severe violence on the island of East Timor, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1272, establishing UN authority over the island, which, in turn, led to the creation of panels to investigate and prosecute crimes committed on the island in 1999. This included the Special Panel for Serious Crimes, East Timor.
The University of California, Berkeley War Crimes Studies Center began engaging in East Timor in 2001, with Director David Cohen served as Expert Advisor to the Commission for Truth and Friendship for Timor-Leste and Indonesia, leading a scholarly team that carried out extensive research for the legal proceedings.
In 2005, the work of the Special Panel for Serious Crimes came to an end, the United Nations deciding to curtail its mission. The panel had completed 55 trials, most involving relatively low-level defendants. In the course of these trials, 84 individuals were convicted and 3 acquitted.
At the conclusion of the trials, and by arrangement with its coordinating Judge, the Honorable Phillip Rapoza, the Center agreed to provide an electronic archive for all the judgments, indictments, and other documents from the proceedings. At the request of Court personnel, the Center also took over and agreed to maintain the website of the prosecution office, the Serious Crimes Unit (SCU) in Dili. This meant that public access to the records was preserved. Unified, these records came to comprise our first tribunal collections. Since the Center relocated to Stanford and began working with the Stanford University Libraries on the Virtual Tribunals initiative, these records have been accessioned into the Stanford Digital Repository and, from 2018, displayed on the Spotlight platform as the “Special Panel for Serious Crimes, East Timor” collection.
Special Tribunal for Lebanon
On Valentine’s Day 2005, a car bomb exploded in Beirut. Murdered in the detonation were the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. Hundreds more were injured. To investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of this and a series of other bombings in Lebanon, the United Nations Security Council, United Nations Secretary-General, and the Lebanese government initiated, designed, and created the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. The Tribunal was to be a court of international character applying Lebanese law, a hybrid of the best of both global and domestic justice. Over its sixteen years of operation, the court pioneered new legal concepts, becoming the first international court to consider the crime of terrorism and the first to hold corporations responsible for their actions.
At the end of 2023, the Tribunal closed and transferred its archives to the United Nations, depriving researchers of access to its records. Just prior to its closure, the Tribunal secured an agreement with Stanford University to permit Virtual Tribunals to make available a digital copy of the records, preserving public access in perpetuity to this important contemporary international criminal tribunal.
The Tribunal’s collection debuted in July 2024 with the 64 files judged most vital to the Tribunal’s work and legacy. In time, the collection will grow to include all public documents from the Tribunal.