Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- 1 White man's justice? Sierra Leone and the expanding project of international law
- 2 The story of the CDF trial
- 3 An unconventional army: chains of command in a patrimonial society
- 4 Facts, metaphysics and mysticism: magical powers and the law
- 5 We cannot accept any cultural consideration: the child soldiers charge
- 6 ‘He's not very forthright’: finding the facts in a culture of secrecy
- 7 Cultural issues in the RUF, AFRC and Charles Taylor trials
- 8 Conclusion: from legal imperialism to dialogics
- References
- Index
2 - The story of the CDF trial
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- 1 White man's justice? Sierra Leone and the expanding project of international law
- 2 The story of the CDF trial
- 3 An unconventional army: chains of command in a patrimonial society
- 4 Facts, metaphysics and mysticism: magical powers and the law
- 5 We cannot accept any cultural consideration: the child soldiers charge
- 6 ‘He's not very forthright’: finding the facts in a culture of secrecy
- 7 Cultural issues in the RUF, AFRC and Charles Taylor trials
- 8 Conclusion: from legal imperialism to dialogics
- References
- Index
Summary
On this solemn occasion mankind is once again assembled before an international tribunal to begin the sober and steady climb upwards towards the towering summit of justice. The path will be strewn with the bones of the dead, the mourns of the mutilated, the cries of agony of the tortured echoing down into the valley of death below. Horrors beyond the imagination will slide into this hallowed hall as this trek upward comes to a most certain and just conclusion. The long dark shadows of war are retreated. Pain, agony, the destruction and the uncertainty are fading; the light of truth, the fresh breeze of justice moves freely about this broken and beaten land. The rule of law marches out of the camps of the downtrodden onward under the banners of never again and no more.
(David Crane, 3 June 2004.)With these dramatic words delivered to a Freetown courtroom packed with local and international press, international observers, the cream of Sierra Leonean civil society NGOs and relatives and supporters of the accused, the prosecution opened its case in the CDF trial. In a speech which figured, on the one hand, the tropes of ascent, progress, light, brightness, truth, justice, the law, civilisation and humanity; and, on the other, darkness, bestiality, barbarism, impunity, evil, death and hell, Prosecutor David Crane set a Manichean scene. He scripted the trial as a contest between justice, anthropomorphised as a Christian soldier, and impunity, depicted by a beast or hound of hell.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Culture under Cross-ExaminationInternational Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, pp. 36 - 70Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009