Finnish Innovation in Transitional Justice, reporting directly from the current Massaquoi Trial
Location:
Zoom event
Date/time
Thu 25 March 2021
14:00 - 15:30
About the Seminar
Thierry Cruvellier, journalist and author, and Editor-in-chief of JusticeInfo.net speaks to us live as a Special Envoy in Liberia, where he is covering the Massaquoi trial, a unique experiment of transnational war crimes justice. By opening Gibril Massaquoi’s trial in Kerava, southern Finland, on February 1, 2021 the Finns are shaking up international criminal justice practice. Massaquoi, a Sierra Leonean former rebel commander, turned into informant n°1 of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone, is now being prosecuted in Finland for war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Liberia. It has been hardly two years since the opening of an investigation into this former Sierra Leonean warlord. It has been completed in record time and is a revolution in universal jurisdiction, all in the midst of a pandemic. Is this a new Finnish model? The Finnish court is challenging the whole paradigm of universal jurisdiction by moving a major part of the trial back to where the crimes were committed. Judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers have flown to Liberia in mid-February, and continue to Sierra Leone, for about two months of hearings on-site. If the Finnish judicial authorities meet their goal, it will have taken less than three years to complete the Massaquoi case, from the time they received a complaint in 2018 to the trial court verdict expected this summer. This unprecedented speed puts to shame the international tribunals and other European countries also handling Liberian war crimes cases.
Faced with the always difficult task of trying foreigners for crimes committed thousands of miles away – according to the principle of “universal jurisdiction” – in a context that is totally foreign to it, Finland is innovating. The Liberian and Sierra Leonean witnesses will not have to leave their country, the court will come to them. This is a profound reversal of current practice in universal jurisdiction, which gives the right to try anyone, anywhere, for international crimes such as torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. These trials traditionally take place in the host country.
At the end of the talk, Thierry will also reflect on the developments he has witnessed over his long career covering transitional justice processes all over the world.
About the Presenter
Thierry has been covering war crimes trials for twenty-four years before international tribunals for Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Bosnia and Cambodia, as well as national justice efforts in Colombia and the Balkans. He has covered the trial of Hissène Habré before the Extraordinary African Chambers, in Senegal. He also covered the war in Sierra Leone between 1990 and 1996 and was Reporters Without Borders representative in Africa’s Great Lakes region in 1994-1995, based in Rwanda. He has been a consultant for a number of non-governmental organizations, including the International Crisis Group, the International Center for Transitional Justice and Internews. He is Editor-in-chief of JusticeInfo.net and an Op-ed contributor to The New York Times. From 2016 to 2019, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 2003-2004 and holds a master’s in journalism from Sorbonne University in Paris. He is the author of three books: Court of Remorse-Inside the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Wisconsin University Press, 2010), The Master of Confessions-The Making of a Khmer Rouge Torturer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2014), and Terre promise (Promised Land), a book on Sierra Leone not yet published in English.
Registration
This online event will take place on Zoom for 90 minutes, with an opportunity for Q&A and discussion towards the end.
The event is free for all, but registration is required (see registration link below).
Global Justice Academy
This event is part of the Global Justice Academy and the Edinburgh Centre for International and Global Law seminars and is also hosted by the LLM Human Rights Programme Representatives at Edinburgh Law School. The seminar is open to all and we welcome students from all LLM areas to join us.