JCE Redux – THE KSC’S FIRST CONFIRMED INDICTMENT (Part 2)

The writer has referred to an error of the Tribunal, to which he was a party; it concerns the question whether joint criminal enterprise was customary international law insofar as it permits of a conviction without proof of intent…. [T]wo rival theories – joint criminal enterprise and co-perpetratorship – hold sway in major parts of the world, but not generally; neither is therefore entitled to be regarded as customary international law.

Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen(( Mohamed Shahabuddeen, Judicial Creativity and Joint Criminal Enterprisein Judicial Creativity at the International Criminal Tribunals 202-03 (Shane Darcy & Joseph Powderly, eds., Oxford University Press, 2010).  ))

Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen presided over the Tadić Appeals Chamber,(( Prosecutor v. Tadić, IT-94-1-A, Judgement, 15 July 1999, paras. 185-234 (Tadić Appeals Judgement). )) the progenitor of one of the most controversial legal issues at the ad hoc tribunals (the ICTY and ICTR) and elsewhere((Much has been written on the modes of liability and JCE. In particular, I recommend Gideon Boas, James Bischoff, and Natalie Ried, Forms of Responsibility in International Criminal Law: International Criminal Law Practitioner Library Series, (Cambridge University Press 2007); Ciara Damgaard, The Joint Criminal Enterprise Doctrine: A “Monster Theory of Liability” or a Legitimate and Satisfactory Tool in the Prosecution of the Perpetrators of Core International Crimes?, in Individual Criminal Responsibility For Core International Crimes 129 (Springer, 2008). See also William A. Schabas, Mens Rea and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 37 New England L. Rev. 1015 (2002); For more on my point of view, see Joint Criminal Enterprise at The ECCC: A critical analysis of two divergent commentaries on the Pre-Trial Chamber’s Decision against the application of JCE, available at http://michaelgkarnavas.net/files/JCE_at_the_ECCC_MGKarnavas.pdf.)) – the individual mode of criminal liability known as joint criminal enterprise (JCE), claimed to be a form of “commission” reflected in customary international law (CIL).(( The moniker joint criminal enterprise as an individual mode of liability has been variously and interchangeably labeled at the ICTY as “common criminal plan,” “common criminal purpose,” “common design or purpose,” “common criminal design,” “common purpose,” “common design,” or “common concerted design.” The common purpose has been more generally described to form part of a “criminal enterprise,” a “common enterprise,” and a “joint criminal enterprise.” See Prosecutor v. Brđanin and Talić, IT-99-36-PT, Decision on Form of Further Amended Indictment and Prosecution Application to Amend, 26 June 2001, para. 24.))

A decade later, reflecting from afar in the comfort of retirement, Shahabuddeen would find the intestinal fortitude, intellectual honesty, and moral clarity to come clean – admitting that JCE was not in fact CIL. Never mind the fibs he and others – most notably the late Judge Antonio Cassese whom Shahabuddeen credits with conceptualizing JCE((In attributing authorship of JCE in Tadić, Shahabuddeen accords the distinction to Cassese. Mohamed Shahabuddeen, Judicial Creativity and Joint Criminal Enterprise, in Judicial Creativity at the International Criminal Tribunals 201 (Shane Darcy & Joseph Powderly, eds., Oxford University Press, 2010). )) – told and re-told, case after case, as they enthusiastically applied JCE in all its forms, staunchly defending it against other more legitimate but less conviction-prone modes of liability, such as perpetration/co-perpetration (as we will see with Stakić).

Shahabuddeen’s unapologetic revelation was couched in situational ethics

Aside from Shahabuddeen’s unapologetic revelation which he couched in situational ethics((Shahabuddeen admitted that it was “an error” to find that JCE was based in customary international law. Mohamed Shahabuddeen, Judicial Creativity and Joint Criminal Enterprise, in Judicial Creativity at the International Criminal Tribunals 188 (Shane Darcy & Joseph Powderly, eds., Oxford University Press, 2010): “Joint criminal enterprise has roots in the common law and co-perpetratorship has roots in the civil law. Neither, considered with the problem of intent, can claim the status of customary international law. It is recognized that universality of support is not needed for the development of customary international law; generality approaching universality will do, depending on the particular situation. But in this case such generality of support is lacking: each of the two theories is supported by a considerable part of the world. That is not consistent with either theory being regarded as customary international law.”)) – i.e., that JCE served a higher purpose despite not being reflected in CIL((See Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraph 2 of the Security Council Resolution 808 (1993), UN Doc. S/25704, 3 May 1993, para. 34: “In the view of the Secretary-General, the application of the principle nullum crimen sine lege requires that the [ICTY] should apply rules of international humanitarian law which are beyond any doubt part of customary law so that the problem of adherence of some but not all States to specific conventions does not arise.”)) – JCE III, its most incendiary form, has also been exposed as a judicially created mode of liability that is not based on, or supported by, the authority claimed to demonstrate its CIL bona fides. Even before Shahabuddeen’s revelation, the JCE’s shine was fading as a host of respected academics attacked its validity, if not also the intellectual integrity of its conceptualizers.(( The list is far too long to include here, but here are a few. See e.g. Allison Marston Danner and Jenny S. Martinez, Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law, 93 Cal. L. Rev. 75 (2005); Mohamed Elewa Badar, “Just Convict Everyone!” – Joint Perpetration: From Tadić to Stakić and Back Again, 6 Int’l Crim. L. Rev. 293 (2006); Kai Ambos, Joint Criminal Enterprise and Command Responsibility, 1 Int’l Crim. Just. 1 (2007); Jens David Ohlin, Joint Criminal Confusion, 12 New Crim. L. Rev. 406 (2009); Jens David Ohlin, Three Conceptual Problems with the Doctrine of Joint Criminal Enterprise, 5 J. Int’l Crim Just. 69 (2007); Nina H.B. Jørgensen, On Being ‘Concerned’ in a Crime: Embryonic Joint Criminal Enterprise?, in Hong Kong’s War Crimes Trials 166 (Suzannah Linton, ed., Oxford University Press, 2013). )) And as we will see in Part 3, the ECCC Pre-Trial Chamber in 2010 (about when Shahabuddeen was unburdening himself) sounded the first death knell on JCE III, debunking the myth that it reflected CIL. The ECCC Trial Chamber would follow suit, as would the ECCC Supreme Court Chamber. Justice Florence Ndepele Mwachande Mumba was one of the seven Supreme Court Chamber Justices to unanimously uphold the Pre-Trial Chamber’s Decision, resoundingly demonstrating the fallacious legal authority the Judges on the TadićAppeal Chamber had claimed to support the customary status of JCE. Ironically, Justice Mumba was also one of the Appeals Chamber Judges in Tadić.

Curiously, KSC Pre-Trial Chamber Judge Nicolas Guillou approvingly refers 50 times to ECCC case law. Yet, when it comes to JCE, he strays no farther from the Tadić porch, which, as ECCC jurisprudence shows (for at least JCE III), is a house of cards founded on specious, misapprehended, and contrived authority.

I can understand the SPO pushing for the application of JCE at the KSC. It is the prosecutorial darling of darlings((An observation even Cassese makes. See Antonio Cassese, The proper Limits of Individual Responsibility Under the Doctrine of Joint Criminal Enterprise, 5 J. Int. Just. 109 (2007).   )) for getting and/or expanding convictions with little regard for proof linking accused to crimes and physical perpetrators. Just as a good defense lawyer would be expected to be creative and cunning in ethically using whatever means at his or her disposal in defending a client, prosecutors are expected to do the same. The SPO’s peddling of JCE, and particularly JCE III, is par for the course. Nothing personal, even though I think it is morally (as opposed to legally/ethically) wrong to press for the use of a mode of liability of dubious distinction. Expectedly, the SPO will point to Tadić and its progeny in arguing that JCE has repeatedly and extensively survived judicial scrutiny. And with the KSC’s adversarial procedure, the SPO is under no obligation to advance any counterarguments yielding profit to the accused/defense.

But what of the KSC Pre-Trial Chamber? In confirming the Indictment, is it not obliged to fairly consider the available jurisprudence in determining the CIL status of the alleged modes of liability – especially those not expressly found in the Law on the Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office (KSC Statute)?

As convincing as the ECCC’s jurisprudence is on JCE III, I circumspectly allow for the improbable possibility that the 17 Judges of the three ECCC chambers, including Justice Mumba with her institutional memory of and recantation (no other way of putting it) of Tadić, might have gotten it wrong in finding that JCE III did not reflect CIL. Regardless of how one leans on the soundness and legitimacy of the ECCC’s holding on JCE III, should not the KSC Pre-Trial Chamber – in confronting JCE for the first time – fairly, squarely, and explicitly have addressed it?

Why purposely ignore relevant ECCC jurisprudence?

Why purposely ignore this jurisprudence? If ECCC jurisprudence is suitable to support or give further credence to all sorts of legal propositions, why ignore its jurisprudence that cuts against the KSC Pre-Trial Chamber’s preferred supporting authority. Why not distinguish the ECCC’s holdings on JCE through sound legal reasoning? Why not show how the authority relied on by the Tadić Appeals Chamber, in fact, supports, beyond doubt, the existence of JCE as a mode of liability in CIL?

Could it be that the failure to note the ECCC’s take on JCE III was an oversight? Hardly. The more logical explanation is that the KSC Pre-Trial Chamber did not want to show its hand. Better to let the defense raise it, and, as was done by ICTY and IRMCT chambers, pithily, if not summarily, reject any JCE challenges based on the ECCC’s jurisprudence.(( See Prosecutor v. Đorđević, IT-05-87/1-A, Judgement, 27 January 2014, paras. 27-53; Prosecutor v. Prlić et al., IT-04-74-A, Judgement, 29 November 2017, paras. 583-91; Prosecutor v. Stanišić and Župljanin, IT-08-91-A, Judgement, 30 June 2016, paras. 586-600; Prosecutor v. Karadžić, MICT-13-55-A, Judgement, 20 March 2019, paras. 422-37.))

In this post I will briefly discuss how the JCE customary status charade was concocted in Tadić and exposed in Stakić, leaving it to Part 3 to discuss how three chambers of the ECCC (Pre-Trial, Trial, and Supreme Court), held that the legal authority relied upon in claiming JCE III to reflect CIL was as specious as it was misleading.

The Birth of JCE

The ICTY, where the JCE customary status charade was hatched.

The Tadić Appeals Chamber created JCE as a distinct form of individual criminal liability applied to a group of people who collectively carried out crimes, holding that the notion of common plan liability is firmly established in customary international law, and albeit implicitly, in the ICTY Statute.(( Tadić Appeal Judgement, para. 220. Article 7(1) of the ICTY Statute provides that “A person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute, shall be individually responsible for the crime.”)) Reasoning that the object and purpose of the ICTY Statute shows that “all those who have engaged in serious violations of international humanitarian law, whatever the manner in which they may have perpetrated, or participated in the perpetration of those violations, must be brought to justice”((Id., paras. 189-90.)) it claimed to have identified (more accurately, invented) three forms of JCE liability:

a.  The basic form (JCE I) ascribes individual criminal liability when “all co-defendants, acting pursuant to a common design, possess the same criminal intention … (even if each co-perpetrator carries out a different role within it)”.((Id., para. 196.))

b.  The systemic form (JCE II) ascribes individual criminal liability when “the offences charged were alleged to have been committed by members of military or administrative units such as those running concentration camps; i.e., by groups of persons acting pursuant to a concerted plan.”((Id., para. 202.))

c.  The extended form (JCE III) ascribes individual criminal liability in situations “involving a common design to pursue one course of conduct where one of the perpetrators commits an act which, while outside the common design, was nevertheless a natural and foreseeable consequence of the effecting of that common purpose.”((Id., para. 204.))

The Tadić Appeals Chamber relied on a motley sort of legal authority

In conceptualizing JCE’s three forms, the Tadić Appeals Chamber relied on a motley sort of legal authority. Space does not permit a full rendition and analysis of the authority, nor is the purpose of the post to re-hash the Tadić Appeal Judgement (see my unaccepted amicus brief to the ECCC Supreme Court Chamber here for a general overview and other submissions I have made in representing IENG Sary here), but here is the gist of it.

In support of JCE I and II, the Tadić Appeals Chamber relied on:

a.  Georg Otto Sandrock et al. (the Amelo Trial), where a British Military Court found three Germans guilty under “common enterprise” for killing a British prisoner of war;((Id., para. 197, citing Trial of Otto Sandrock and three others, British Military Court for the Trial of War Criminals, held at the Court House, Almelo, Holland, 24-26 November 1945, UNWCC, Vol. I, p. 35.))

b.  Hoelzer et al., where a Canadian Military Court spoke of a “common enterprise” in reference to a murder of a Canadian prisoner by three Germans;((Id., para. 197, citing Hoelzer et al., Canadian Military Court, Aurich, Germany, Record of Proceedings 25 March-6 April 1946, Vol. I, pp. 341, 347, 349.))

c.  Jepsen and others, where the Prosecutor before a British court argued that if the accused joined in the murder of eighty or so people by helping to do his share of the killing, he and anyone who assisted should be responsible for the whole eighty deaths;((Id., para. 198, citing Trial of Gustav Alfred Jepsen and others, Proceedings of a War Crimes Trial held at Luneberg, Germany, 13-23 August 1946, Judgement of 24 August 1946.))

d.  Schoenfeld, where the Judge Advocate stated that “if several persons combine for an unlawful purpose or lawful purpose to be effected by unlawful means, and one of them in carrying out that purpose, kills a man, it is murder in all who are present”;((Id., para. 198, citing Trial of Franz Schonfeld and others, British Military Court, Essen, 11-26 June 1946, UNWCC, Vol. XI, p. 68.))

e.  Ponzano, concerning the killing of British prisoners of war, where the British Judge Advocate found that to be found guilty, the accused must have been “concerned in” the offence;((Id., para. 199, citing Trial of Feurstein and others, Proceedings of a War Crimes Trial held at Hamburg, Germany, 4-24 August 1948, Judgement of 24 August 1948.))

f.  Einsatzgruppen, where a United States Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg noted that accessories who consent in the commission of crimes or are connected with plans or enterprises involved in its commission, or those who belong to an organization or group engaged in the commission of the crime should also be held guilty;((Id., para. 200, citing U.S. v. Otto Ohlenforf et al., Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1951, Vol. IV.))

g.  The Dachau, Belsen, Auschwitz, concentration camp cases;((Id., para. 202, citing Trial of Martin Gottfried Weiss and thirty-nine others, General Military Government Court of the United States Zone, Dachau, Germany, 15 November-13 December 1945, UNWCC, Vol. XI, p. 5; Trial of Josef Kramer and 44 others, British Military Court, Luneberg, 17 September-17 November 1945, UNWCC, Vol. II, p. 1; Case against R. Mulka et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Vol. XXI, p. 838 ff., and p. 881 ff. )) and

h.  Obscure jurisprudence from Post-World War II trials held in Italy and Germany.((Id., para. 201, fns. 246-247.))

In support of JCE III, the Tadić Appeals Chamber relied on:

a.  The Essen Lynching case before a British Military Court involving the lynching of three British prisoners of war who were taken for interrogation by the German army, where the army captain, escort, and five German civilians were charged with being “concerned in” their killing;(( See Id., paras. 207-209. Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Selected and prepared by the United Nations War Crimes Commission, Vol. I (1947), p. 91; Transcript, in Public Record Office, London, WO 235/58, 65-68. ))

b.  The Borkum Island case, where a US aircraft was shot down over German territory and its crew was subjected to a death march, and where the accused were charged with “willfully, deliberately, and wrongfully, encourag[ing], aid[ing], abett[ing] and participat[ing] in the killing’ of … airmen and with ‘wilfully, deliberately and wrongfully encourag[ing], aid[ing], abett[ing] and participat[ing] in assaults upon the airmen;’”((Id., para. 210, quoting from United States v. Goebell et al., Case No. 12-489, General Military Government Court at Ludwigsburg, Germany, 6 February – 21 March 1946, Charge Sheet, in U.S. National Archives Microfilm Publications, I.))

c.  Several handwritten and unpublished (or otherwise obscure) Post World-War II cases brought before Italian courts concerning domestic crimes committed by civilians or military personnel belonging to the armed forces of the so-called Repubblica Sociale Italiana;((Id., paras. 214-19.))

d.  The Rome Statute (which does not codify JCE) and the International Convention on the Suppression of Terrorist Bombing (mirroring co-perpetration under Article 25(3)(c) of the Rome Statute);((Id., paras. 220-23. )) and

e.  A sampling of domestic criminal law from Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Zambia.((Id., para. 224.))

JCE was challenged in virtually every case in which it was raised, to no appreciable avail. Noteworthy, however, for a form of liability basking in customary status, in virtually every instance when challenged, the ICTY Chambers wrestled in explaining and recalibrating its contours, applicability, and, in no short measure, its legitimacy.((See e.g. Prosecutor v. Stakić, IT-97-24-T, Judgement, 31 July 2003, paras. 438–442 (“Stakić Trial Judgement”); Prosecutor v. Simić et al., IT-95-9-T, Judgement, Separate and Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Per-Johan Lindholm, 17 October 2003; Prosecutor v. Brđanin and Talić, IT-99-36-A, Decision on Interlocutory Appeal, 19 March 2004, paras. 5-10; Prosecutor v. Gacumbitsi, ICTR-2001-64-A, Judgement, Separate Opinion of Judge Schomburg on the Criminal Responsibility of the Appellant for Committing Genocide, 7 July 2006; Prosecutor v. Simić, IT-95-9- A, Judgement, Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schomburg, 28 November 2006, paras. 12, 14; Prosecutor v. Martić, IT-95-11-A, Judgement, Separate Opinion of Judge Schomburg on the Individual Criminal Responsibility of Milan Martić, 8 October 2008; Prosecutor v. Prlić et al., IT-04-74-T, Judgement, Separate and Partially Dissenting Opinion of Presiding Judge Jean-Claude Antonetti, 29 May 2013, p. 88-182. See also Prosecutor v. Gacumbitsi, ICTR-2001-64-A, Judgement, Separate Opinion of Judge Shahabuddeen, 7 July 2006, para. 47, where Shahabuddeen states: “co-perpetratorship theory merits careful evaluation; there is much force in the logic of its underlying principles. If the matter were res integra, I would, for my part, give renewed consideration to it.” He then explains that he does not feel it would be appropriate to do so in that case, considering that JCE was by that point well established in ICTR jurisprudence.)) But there were judges who also saw JCE for what it was, and given the opportunity, shied away from applying it, opting instead for the time-tested and widely accepted mode of liability of perpetration/co-perpetration. Stakić, presided over by Judge Wolfgang Schomburg, would ultimately be responsible for exposing the CIL myth of JCE.

Stakić and the use of perpetration/co-perpetration

The Stakić Trial Chamber found that co-perpetration more closely resembles what most legal systems understand as “committing” and “avoids the misleading impression that a new crime not foreseen in the Statute of this Tribunal has been introduced through the backdoor.”(( Stakić Trial Judgement, para. 441.)) The Stakić Trial Chamber considered that “a more direct reference to ‘commission’ in its traditional sense should be given priority before considering responsibility under the judicial term ‘joint criminal enterprise.”((Id., para. 438.)) For co-perpetration there must be “joint control over the conduct,” meaning that an individual’s refusal to participate in the crime can frustrate that action.((Id., para. 440.)) By contrast, JCE does not require that the accused’s participation be a “sine qua non, without which the crimes could or would not have been committed.”(( Prosecutor v. Kvočka et al., IT-98-30/1-A, Judgement, 28 February 2005, para. 98.))

After the Stakić Trial Judgement, the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor in 2005 commissioned the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law to conduct a comprehensive comparative study of the criminal liability attributed to leaders of criminal groups, which concluded that co-perpetration, not JCE, was the mode of liability the world over.(( Participation in Crime: Criminal Liability of Leaders of Criminal Groups and Networks, Expert Opinion, Commissioned by the United Nations – ICTY, Office of the Prosecutor Project Coordination: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Sieber, Priv. Doz. Dr. Hans Georg Koch, Jan Michael Simon, Max Planck Institut für ausländisches und internationales Strafrecht, Freiburg, Germany, Introduction, p. 3; Part 1: Comparative Analysis of Legal Systems, p. 16.)) The Stakić Appeals Chamber (Judge Fausto Pocar, presiding, along with two other JCE enthusiasts – Shahabuddeen and Judge Theodor Meron) ignored this study when rendering its judgment in 2006, finding the Trial Chamber’s application of co-perpetration to be ultra vires because it seemingly did not have support in customary international law or the ICTY’s jurisprudence.((Prosecutor v. Stakić, IT-97-24-A, Judgement, 22 March 2006, para. 62.)) The Appeals Chamber summarily dispensed with the Trial Chamber’s reasoning, simply citing ICTY jurisprudence in finding that JCE is firmly established in CIL and routinely applied at the ICTY.((Id.)) What a canard?

In Simić et al., (Judge Mumba, presiding), Judge Lindholm, in an uncharacteristically sharp dissent, expressed his support of perpetration/co-perpetration, seeing JCE for what it is: “of no substance of its own” and being “nothing more than a label affixed to a since long-known concept or doctrine in most jurisdictions as well as in international criminal law, namely co-perpetration.”((Prosecutor v. Simić et al., IT-95-9-T, Judgement, Separate and Partly Dissenting Opinion of Judge Per-Johan Lindholm, 17 October 2003, para. 2.)) Specific to JCE III he bluntly noted:

I dissociate myself from the concept or doctrine of joint criminal enterprise in this case as well as generally … The concept or ‘doctrine’ has caused confusion and a waste of time, and in my opinion of no benefit to the work of the Tribunal or the development of international criminal law.(( Id., paras. 2, 5.))

Sitting on the Simić Appeals Chamber (along with Shahabuddeen), Judge Schomburg picked up where he had left in Stakić. Although JCE’s application was not raised or discussed in the Simić appeals, in his dissenting opinion, Judge Schomburg relied on the Max Planck study to further support his position that co-perpetration is firmly entrenched in customary international law:

With all due respect, I maintain my position that co-perpetratorship if firmly entrenched in customary international law. Unfortunately, when Stakić Trial Judgement was rendered, the Trial Chamber – solely composed of civil law judges – took it for granted that the notion of co-perpetration need not be academically supported by reference to State practice.(( Prosecutor v. Simić et al., IT-95-9-A, Judgement, Dissenting Opinion of Judge Schomburg, 28 November 2006, fn. 20.))

It was not until the matter came up at the ECCC, where the Pre-Trial Chamber did a thorough examination of the authority relied on to establish JCE, concluding that JCE III((Case of NUON Chea et al., 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/OCIJ(PTC38), Decision on the Appeals of the Co-Investigative Judges’ on Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), 20 May 2010, D97/15/9.)) (the most controversial form)(( See e.g. Ciara Damgaard, The Joint Criminal Enterprise Doctrine: A “Monster Theory of Liability” or a Legitimate and Satisfactory Tool in the Prosecution of the Perpetrators of Core International Crimes?, in INDIVIDUAL CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CORE INTERNATIONAL CRIMES 129 (Springer, 2008): “[T]his doctrine raises a number of grave concerns. It, arguably, inter alia, is imprecise, dilutes standards of proof, undermines the principle of individual criminal responsibility in favour of collective responsibility, infringes the nullum crimen sine lege principle and infringes the right of the accused to a fair trial.” Mohamed Elewa Badar, “Just Convict Everyone!” – Joint Perpetration: From Tadić to Stakić and Back Again, 6 INT’L CRIM. L. REV. 293, 301 (2006): “A major source of concern with regard to the applicability of JCE III in the sphere of international criminal law is that under both the objective and subjective standards, the participant is unfairly held liable for criminal conducts that he neither intended nor participated in.” William A. Schabas, Mens Rea and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 37 NEW ENGLAND L. REV. 1015, 1033-34 (2002): “Granted these two techniques [JCE and command responsibility] facilitate the conviction of individual villains who have apparently participated in serious violations of human rights. But they result in discounted convictions that inevitably diminish the didactic significance of the Tribunal’s judgements and that compromise its historical legacy.”)) did not support the much-acclaimed holding in Tadić, that the charade was exposed.((Case of NUON Chea et al., 002/19-09-2007-ECCC/OCIJ(PTC38), Decision on the Appeals of the Co-Investigative Judges’ on Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), 20 May 2010, D97/15/9.))

Continued in Part III.

Did you miss Part I?  Read it here.

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Author: Michael G. Karnavas

Michael G. Karnavas is an American trained lawyer. He is licensed in Alaska and Massachusetts and is qualified to appear before the various International tribunals, including the International Criminal Court (ICC). Residing and practicing primarily in The Hague, he is recognized as an expert in international criminal defence, including pre-trial, trial, and appellate advocacy.

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