War Crime Prosecutors Issue Call for Action

At Unusual Gathering in N.Y., an Appeal to World Community to Arrest Those Charged

CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. -- An unprecedented gathering this week of international war crimes prosecutors -- those seeking justice for recent atrocities and two who made history at the Nazi trials at Nuremberg 62 years ago -- issued a joint appeal to the world community to arrest war criminals still at large and turn them over to stand trial.

Meeting at this scenic Victorian-style enclave overlooking a small marina, the prosecutors sought to rekindle the legacy of Nuremberg and send a message to war crimes perpetrators everywhere that no one is above the law.

There was also strong criticism of the United States at the gathering for not fully backing the International Criminal Court (ICC) and for failing to follow the Geneva Conventions in detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects.

"No one is above the law. The law is fair, and the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of the gun," said David M. Crane, the first chief prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, summing up the group's final communique, called the First Chautauqua Declaration, signed by nine international prosecutors in charge of the major war crimes trials of the past century. Crane is now a professor of international criminal law at Syracuse University.

The appeal named Bosnian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic; Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda; Ahmad Muhammad Harun, a Sudanese state minister who is accused of organizing attacks on civilians in Darfur; and Rwanda's F?licien Kabuga, among others.

"We do not have coercive powers. We rely on member states. We need states to ensure arrests demanded by the prosecution. If not, our work has a sense of futility," said Hassan Bubacar Jallow of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. "Is the justice we seek, the justice you want?" he asked, reminding those present that the wishes and needs of victims have to be addressed more carefully.

The general thrust of arguments Wednesday during day-long public and private meetings was that certain war crimes suspects remained free because of politics and that arresting them would end a culture of impunity.

"To turn these over is a political decision now, not a legal one. We have done our job," Crane said of the suspects. "Let the word go out to warlords and leaders all over the world. However powerful, however mighty, however feared you may be, the law is above you. The law will bring you down," said Desmond de Silva, deputy prosecutor at the Sierra Leone tribunal.

The nine prosecutors attending were Whitney R. Harris and Henry T. King Jr. from the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg; Luis Moreno-Ocampo, from the ICC; Jallow, from the tribunal for Rwanda; Crane, de Silva and Stephen Rapp from the Sierra Leone court; David Tolbert from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; and Robert Petit, from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Together, they ceremoniously signed the declaration after discussions of the advances since Nuremberg and the challenges that remain. The ICC is permanently based in The Hague, and the rest are ad hoc tribunals set up by the United Nations, the United States and regional parties.

The buzz outside the meeting hall was about how former Liberian president Charles Taylor was costing the Sierra Leone tribunal about $1,000 a day for his two cells in the compound designated by Dutch authorities for the ICC. Taylor found Dutch foods such as smoked fish and croquettes distasteful and demanded "culturally specific foods." After receiving permission to order ground nuts and cassava leaf products from a specialty grocery store, Rapp said, Taylor complained about having to prepare his own food. The costly Sierra Leone case has dragged on since 2002 because of delays demanded by the judges and has triggered a U.N. probe.

A sense of history and camaraderie reigned among the young prosecutors and their older Nuremberg peers. Crane recalled how, after three years in Sierra Leone, and still decompressing from the horror of atrocities, he asked Nuremberg veteran King what it took to cope with the pain.