All’s Well that Ends Well? - Reflecting the Sentencing Practice of the ICTR

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

As a part of the completion strategy the Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals is about to resume and continue the mandates of the ICTR. Presumably by 2015 the ICTR will be closed.
Regarding this upcoming end of an era and in the light of the 20 years that passed since the massacres in Rwanda the work of the ICTR was reflected.
Especially the sentencing practice at the ICTR is of prominent interest. Not only for its allied successor the ICC but for the evaluation of the ICTR itself.
Analyzing all sentences of the ICTR it will be shown, that it has disregarded the nemo tenetur principle in at least 9 cases. Through this it violated Art. 20 IV g ICTR-Statute.
Furthermore the ICTR breached its statute sentencing 12 accused to prison sentences over 30 Years. This practice is not in accordance with the rwandan penal law, which the ICTR is obliged to consider under Art. 23 I ICTR-Statute.
Resuming these breaches of law, fundamental questions regarding the international criminal law and its sentencing legitimacy arise.

Authors

• Lea Babucke, University of Hamburg

• Maximilian Kock, University of Hamburg