On the 1 December 2014, The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued its Judgments on the Lubanga Trial Judgment and Sentencing Judgment. These judgments bring to a final close the first trial of the Court, nearly 9 years after Lubanga was transferred to the Court and nearly 3 years after the Trial Judgment. The Appeals Chamber confirmed everything, both the judgment and the sentence, with a partially dissenting opinion from Judge Song and a very strong dissent from Judge Usacka.
This trial has been a regular feature of this blog (see more particularly discussion of the Trial Judgment here, here and here and of the sentencing Judgment here and here). If you go through past commentaries of the trial, you will note that a number of issues have created controversy over the years: Prosecutorial miscond… sorry, negligence in relation to the use of intermediaries, the relevancy of evidence of sexual violence or whether the definition of co-perpetration includes a “control over the crime” criteria as imported out of thin air (or rather German criminal law doctrine) by a number of Chambers at the Court. More generally, this was a first opportunity to test the “Ocampo Legacy” at the appeals level. So, how did the Appeals Chamber do? Continue reading
Spreading the Jam 