Special Court for Sierra Leone, RUF Trial, Update 27

RUF Trial

Special Court for Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

English

After a three-week recess for the Easter break, the RUF trial commenced its fourth session this week, with the prosecution calling its twenty-sixth witness. The trial session opened on Wednesday with the Honourable Judge Itoe “welcoming back this family” after a long break. Calling upon divine intervention, his Honour then added that the Chamber hoped “the Lord God will endow [us] with the energies to be able to scale through the six weeks that lie ahead…”

Witness TF1-263, allegedly a former child combatant who was captured by the RUF in Kono, was the only witness that testified this week. Key issues that arose during the course of proceedings included the significance of establishing the exact age of child combatants, the lengthiness of examination-in-chief and cross-examination and the affect the timing of the Chamber’s release of decisions has on a witness’s ability to testify.