View Video | Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal

Alex Obote Odora
speaks on ...

the appointment of judges and length of proceedings

Transcript

0:00

You know when the ICTR and ICTY were established, the first officials to be appointed were the judges and I think that was a mistake. I think the first people to be appointed should have been the Prosecutor who would then be in charge of investigators, and then get lawyers and others later because without investigators you do not have the material to provide an indictment even to send in for confirmation.

0:36

The result is that for very many years the judges were sitting waiting for cases to begin and the same mistake was done with the ICC; they get the judges appointed first and once the judges are appointed the assumption is that the court is ready. So people begin, the time, so the time begins to run when the judges are appointed. So they will say for the last four years nothing is happening.

1:03

Actually a lot is happening in the sense that if investigations were the first to go to the field, they will collect informations, they would assess this; by the time they are ready to draft the indictment for judges to confirm the indictment that‘s when judges would be appointed.