Ad Hoc Human Rights Court Report No. 3

Ad Hoc Human Rights Court

East Timor/Indonesia

English

The Ad Hoc Human Rights Court for East Timor has went on for nearly four months now, since the commencement of the first trial in the month of February 2002.

At this point, the examination process has begun examining the witnesses. This process is the continuance right after the allegations and responses, as well as the Preliminary Verdict of the Counsellor ad hoc Human Rights Court panel of judges in further response towards the objections the Counsellor has put forward in connection with the case where court prevails over the case's authority. Therefore, the witness examination process is based on the attempt to obtain information regarding the legal facts that are involved with the items in the charges in the letter of allegations of the ad hoc General Attorney. This effort is done through questioning the witnesses that come forward to the stand. These questions are given to find the element of crime from the allegations, in this case, concerning crimes against humanity and command responsibility . It is expected that through the knowledge of the witnesses of the incident, it can help find the legal facts required in locating the truth in court.

Therefore, in this phase, the ability of the General Attorney to formulate clearly the elements of crime from the charges that has been formulated to become one important factor. As regulated in the regulations regarding the establishment of proof in the Criminal Conduct, the witnesses' information will be the main evidence in the court process . There are three important things that will be iterated further in this report: (1) General monitoring throughout the whole process of examining the witnesses for one month, (2) the content of the testimony, and (3) The procedureof examining the witness, which includes the rights of the witness within the court - particularly, in relation with witnesses who are victims.