PRESS BRIEFING ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

PRESS BRIEFING ON INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT

Because the International Criminal Court has become operational, “those who author the most savage of crimes, wherever he or she may be, and whatever official position he or she may hold, will, with the passage of time, find no friend in impunity”, the President of States parties to the Rome Statute,
Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein (Jordan) told correspondents this afternoon at Headquarters, during a briefing in which he introduced the President of the Court and the newly elected Prosecutor.

To that end, he continued, the national courts, as the primary actors, will -– indeed must –- take up their duties to prosecute those individuals culpable for the worst atrocities.  The International Criminal Court would station itself in the background and act as the world’s permanent conscience, taking up its responsibilities only when national jurisdictions were unwilling, or genuinely unable to do so.

Mr. Al-Hussein said the first President of the Court, Judge
Philippe Kirsch of Canada, had been chairman of the preparatory commission of the Court and, prior to that, of the committee of the whole at the diplomatic conference in Rome at which the statute for the Court was adopted in the summer of 1998.  After having been elected as a Judge of the Court in February this year, Judge Kirsch was unanimously elected by the other seventeen elected judges to serve as first President of the Court.

Yesterday, the States parties unanimously elected the first Chief Prosecutor of the Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo of Argentina, he continued.
Mr. Moreno Ocampo was a man with deep experiences as a litigator of high-profile cases in his own country.  “Always passionate and scrupulous in his defence of the law, sensitive to the concerns of victims and meticulous in his approach to building cases”, Mr. Moreno Ocampo was the prosecutor for which the States parties had been searching.

Judge Kirsch said the Court had been inaugurated on 11 March, and was now a reality.  The basic administrative infrastructure was there and the judges had been sworn in.  Mr. Moreno Ocampo had been elected yesterday.  The Registrar would be elected by the judges in June.

He said the presidency had been working on administrative issues and judges had started to address, among other things, issues of defence, witnesses and victims, ethics, pre-trial rules and appeals.  He was confident that by the time cases were presented, the Court would be ready to function and meet the expectations of the international community.

Mr. Moreno Ocampo said the problem with genocide was that people tended to deny the occurrence of it, or often did not care, because it happened in a far away country.  The Court, therefore, had been referred to as the “never again Court”. Citing experts, he said that, since the Second World War, 86 million civilians had died, been disabled, or been stripped of their rights, property or dignity.

The primary responsibility to prevent, control and prosecute atrocious crimes belong to the States in whose jurisdictions they were committed, he said. 

The Court was not meant to replace States’ responsibilities.  The principle of complementarity established by the Rome Statute compelled the Prosecutor’s Office to collaborate with national jurisdictions, in order to help improve their efficiency.  There would be cases, however, in which States would not be able to -- or not want to -- fulfil their mission.  In those cases, the Court must fill the gap.  The Prosecutor would be in charge of triggering the international jurisdiction.

The efficiency of the Court should not be measured by the number of cases that reached the Court or by the content of its decisions, he said.  Because of the exceptional character of the institution, the absence of trials led by the Court, which would be a consequence of the regular functioning of national institutions, would be its major success.

Aware of concerns regarding his powers to launch an investigation on his own initiative, he stressed that there was a system of checks and balances to prevent abuse of power.  The Assembly of States Parties would control the Prosecutor’s behaviour; the pre-trial chamber would control the cases.  The judges had been selected from among the best candidates from 43 countries.
“The world can trust them”, he said.

His first act as Prosecutor would be to assemble a “dream team” for his office, based on geographical, gender and cultural representation.  “I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the twentieth century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the ICC will help us to prevent those atrocities from being repeated in the future”, he said.

Responding to correspondents’ questions, Judge Kirsch said one of the four crimes listed in the Statute was genocide and that crime was based on the Convention against Genocide.  The Court was a completely new institution that had jurisdiction over crimes committed after the entry into force of the Rome Statute, which took place on 1 July 2002.  It, therefore, would not supersede the ad hoc tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

Addressing a question about whether a current head of State or government could be prosecuted by the Court, Mr. Al-Hussein answered in the affirmative, quoting article 27 of the Rome Statute, which said:  “This Statute shall apply equally to all persons, without any distinction based on official capacity.”

Asked how the Court could be guaranteed not to be influenced by national courts, Mr. Moreno Ocampo said that was a long-term problem.  The Court was independent, but had to respect States.  It would have to show how seriously it was working, and so overcome reluctance of some.

Asked when the Prosecutor could trigger intervention by the Court,
Judge Kirsch said the Court was based on the principle of complementarity, but could intervene, for instance, in a case where the judicial system of a country had collapsed.  There could also be a situation where a State did not take action, or took action in such a way that it was clear it was trying to shelter an alleged criminal.  Through a process that was very strict, the Court could in such a case take over jurisdiction.

A correspondent asked how the Court would deal with complaints about crimes in Iraq committed by United States citizens.  Mr. Moreno Ocampo said only cases from countries that were States parties would be handled by the Court, and Iraq and the United States were not States parties.  However, the national systems could address those cases. The Court was global, with 89 States parties, but was not yet universal.

Mr. Al-Hussein said that assuming a non-State party invaded the territory of a State party and crimes were committed there, the State party could call upon the Court to exercise its jurisdiction, in which case, the jurisdiction of the Court would apply to those who had directed the commission of crimes on the territory of the State party.

Asked how the opposition of the United States to the Court could affect its performance, Judge Kirsch said that the Court could function the way it was.  The vocation of the Court was universality.  The foundation of the exercise of the jurisdiction of the Court was of extremely high quality.  He stressed the Court was not a political body.  The next step for the Court was to demonstrate in practice what was clear in principle.  It was a matter of time.

Answering another question, Judge Kirsch said the Court’s first budget of September 2002 to the end of 2003 was just over $30 million.  The situation next year was unpredictable, as there might be cases before the Court.

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