ICT Bangladesh: Defence Team Takes A Stand

The defence team took a joint decision that in circumstances that the Tribunal elected to push ahead with charging we would take no part in the hearing. This was a decision that we took quite reluctantly, but owing to the wholly inadequate opportunity we have been afforded to contest the charging procedure, we felt that we had no choice but to abstain from the proceedings. The reasons are as follows:

(a) Inadequate time allowed to take client's instructions due to terms of court orders and obstructive conduct of prison/jail officers;
(b) Late service of papers;
(c) Vast quantity of papers;
(d) Lack of specificity regarding the proposed charges filed in late July;
(e) The continued difficulty with illegible/missing pages;
(f) The wholesale lack of definitions of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide, as well as offences e.g. Murder, Extermination, Deportation, Rape etc;
(g) Absence of a definition of character of the conflict; and
(g) International condemnation of the legal procedures.

The sum of all this is that not only has the defence had insufficient time to assess the evidence against them, they are as yet deprived of knowing the legal requirements of the case against them.

Toby Cadman