Today's NYT reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) ordered all proceedings stopped on the trial of the Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Mind you Lubanga spent three years after he was indicted and captured without a trial.
As the Times states, after difficult hearings the judges dismissed the case and ruled that the prosecution had withheld “significant” exculpatory evidence from the defense. As a result, they wrote, “the trial process has been ruptured to such a degree that it is now impossible to piece together the constituent elements of a fair trial.”
Right, the ICC is proving more and more how arrogant and ineffective they are. A couple things could be going on here.
The Court's mission is to try the “most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.” Lubanga, however, is clearly a small-timer as Congolese warlords go. SInce the ICC HAS YET to try or convict anyone, it may be that they want an easy case to get the ball rolling. If this is the case, then they've just proved themselves and the rest of the international legal/political community wrong.
On the other hand, the ICC may have hoped that Lubanga could set an example for the bigger fish in Central Africa, since the fundamental goal of setting up an international justice system and the ICC specifically is that the prosecution of war criminals will deter and fight against impunity.
But, with the trial essentially gone, good luck with this point.
This is annoying for us idealists and pragmatists desiring a strong international justice system one day...
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