Special Court for Sierra Leone, CDF Trial, Update 78a

CDF Trial

Special Court for Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

English

No witnesses testified during this, the sixth, week of the CDF trial session. The court reconvened proceedings from the previous week on Wednesday. Proceedings were again adjourned until the following Wednesday, June 14, 2006, as the Norman defence team was unable to arrange for the appearance of any of their remaining witnesses, the two remaining key witnesses to be called being President Kabbah and Major General AbdulOne Mohammed.

A decision on the defence motion for the issuance of a subpoena for President Kabbah is still pending and the Presiding judge indicated that it would not be available before Tuesday of next week. The defence team has informed the court that the Major General is not currently able to travel from Nigeria, where he resides, in order to testify in the current trial session. This is due to his ill health. The team filed a report on the status of this witness with the Trial Chamber. Dr. Jabbi, lead counsel, indicated that his team was in the process of deciding whether the evidence of Witness 26 (from the team’s core list of witnesses) could be submitted under the 92bis rule, which allows the ‘Chamber to admit as evidence, in whole or in part, information in lieu of oral testimony’.

Related to these witness issues, the Norman team filed a motion on the sixth of June asking to defer any further evidence and postpone the closure of the Norman defence case to the following trial session, which will commence in September 2006.4 The Trial Chamber has repeatedly voiced its desire to have the Norman defence case completed bythe end of the current trial session and, subsequently, to have the Fofana defence case commence in September.

The Trial Chamber issued a decision this week related to the requests by the second and third accused for leave to raise evidentiary objections. Defence counsel have repeatedly attempted to intervene during the Prosecution’s cross-examination of witnesses that have been called by other Accused (after the completion of their own cross-examination). The Trial Chamber has indicated that they will assess such interventions in a contingent, context-specific manner. In response to the most recent defence application the Trial Chamber acknowledged that, in such multi-Accused trials, cross-examination may not be strictly limited only to those issues that arise from the direct examination of a witness. However, the Chamber opined that in such situations, where objections during the crossexamination by the Prosecution were to be raised, counsel can consult with counsel who did call the witness and raise objections through them. In specific cases counsel can seek leave to object to questions raised by the Prosecution in cross-examination and the Chamber would assess such applications on a case-by-case basis, in the interests of justice. The Chamber stated that such a practice was in line with that of other international criminal tribunals and reiterated its earlier, oral rulings of February 9th and 20th, 2006. The procedural aspects of such a joint trial have become major points of controversy in the Trial Chamber I courtroom, with defence counsel feeling increasingly frustrated that they are unable to address issues that they perceive as being in the interests of their client.