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3 - An unconventional army: chains of command in a patrimonial society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2010

Tim Kelsall
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Summary

The Special Court charged the CDF defendants not only with individual responsibility for committing, ordering, planning, instigating, aiding and abetting criminal acts, but also with superior responsibility for crimes committed by their subordinates. In doing so, it drew on an identifiable stream of jurisprudence that ran from the Middle Ages in Europe, through the military tribunals at Nuremburg and the Far East, to the ad hoc tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. But despite being quite well established in international law, the doctrine of superior responsibility had yet to be applied to a society or a confl ict that was quite like Sierra Leone's. In particular, the historical fragility of formal authority relations and the pervasive nature of informal, patrimonial arrangements, while placing Sierra Leone together with many other Third World countries, differentiated it from other states previously the target of international trials, including even Rwanda. These facts notwithstanding, Fofana and Kondewa had, by the end of the trial, been found guilty as superiors for crimes in Bo, Koribundo and Bonthe. I begin the chapter by outlining some of the most important jurisprudence on command responsibility. Then I provide an overview of informal authority relations in peace and wartime Sierra Leone. Next, I summarise the testimony of two expert witnesses to the Special Court, one a British military expert, the other an American anthropologist, who debated the nature of command authority in the CDF.

Type
Chapter
Information
Culture under Cross-Examination
International Justice and the Special Court for Sierra Leone
, pp. 71 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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