Bringing witnesses to The Hague to testify, and providing them with protection before and after they testify, is a major challenge for the Special Court. If you relocate someone to a “cushy” place, the defense could argue that the witness only testified so that they could leave Sierra Leone for the UK, or wherever.

60% of Special Court staff are Sierra Leonean. That’s great. But I still can’t believe the chief prosecutor is white and American. It just seems colonial. When I heard Rapp and other Special Court officials speak to Liberian civil society groups in Monrovia last year, a lot of the Special Court people were white. Too many, I think.

The Liberian Ambassador to the UN, Nathaniel Barnes, said the Liberian government hopes Taylor will receive a fair trial. The Ambassador sounded completely American. I could only detect a Liberian accent if I listened for it. I continue to be a little worried that so many senior officials in the Sirleaf administration sound more American than Liberian. After all, many historians argue that the 14-year war was partly if not mostly caused by grievances between ancestors of the freed American slaves/settler elite and the indigenous population they systematically marginalized. On a different note, some Wikipedia-ing shows that Barnes was a finance minister under Taylor.

Now that Taylor’s trial has finally started, it is moving along much more quickly than expected.

Some of the Special Courts’ resources are being devoted to tracking down Taylor’s assets.

The Special Court allows hearsay testimony.

Verified statements can be submitted as evidence, as long as they are not used to connect Taylor to the charges against him. (i.e. Verified statements can be used for historical context.)

Taylor does not deny that crimes were committed in Sierra Leone, he denies his responsibility. So most of the trial will be about proving linkage.

Rapp said “the people in Liberia are very interested in this trial.” That conflicts with what my Liberian friend and human rights activist Barward Johnson told a reporter in this article. Barward said “public interest in the country was ‘only moderate.’”

I was impressed with Rapp’s emphasis on the Special Court’s outreach section. From what I have seen in Liberia, the outreach section effectively conveys to Liberians what the Special Court is, and its jurisdiction.

The Special Court has to rely on voluntary financial contributions. At one point last year they had to pay a late fee to The Hague for delayed payment for a safe house because they were waiting for money from the US.

France is unable to financially support the Special Court because it expects to give a good chunk of money to the UN Hariri tribunal. A number of Asian countries are unable to financially support the Special Court because they are expecting to be hit up soon with requests to support Cambodia’s genocide tribunal. The bright side of this: the wheels of international justice mechanisms are turning in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.