Cushy Digs for Indicted Warlords?

The New York Times today published a story on the living conditions of indictees at the ICC detention centre in The Hague. It’s an issue with great potential for indignation and grandstanding, and the Times provided a reasonably balanced set of comments. But first, a few of the juicy details:

Beyond the brick towers of a Dutch prison just east of here is a compound where former Congolese warlords, Serbian militia leaders and a former Liberian president accused of instigating murder, rape and enslavement are confined in two detention centers with private cells stocked like college dormitories, with wooden bookcases, television sets and personal computers. Among the other amenities are a gym, a trainer, a spiritual room and a common kitchen where some former enemies trade recipes and dine on cevapi, or Balkan meatballs…

But an additional benefit — travel subsidies of tens of thousands of euros for family visits from distant African countries — is stirring an emotional debate among the court’s donor nations…

Thanks to conjugal visits, several detainees became new fathers, including a Serbian general and [Charles] Taylor, 62, whose baby girl was born in February.

Supporters of international criminal justice tend to be committed to the rights of the accused and therefore accept most of these expenses. But the conjugal and family visits are apparently a step too far. A group of States Parties, including France and Italy, has challenged these disbursements, noting that accused persons in their own judicial system don’t enjoy such benefits.

The complaint by State Parties will likely be resolved through compromise and a trimming of costs. (Expenses are a major issue at the Court, especially given increasing budgetary demands due to investigations in multiple countries and increased witness participation.) But two other groups might continue in their outrage.

First, opponents to the Court. One can imagine an anti-ICC firebrand speaking of ‘warlords procreating in Dutch luxury.’

Second, and more poignantly, the victims of these men’s (alleged) crimes. A few years ago in Sierra Leone, I interviewed a young man whose parents were killed and sister raped by the rebels. After seeing defendants at the Special Court for Sierra Leone and hearing of the conditions under which they might serve a sentence, he said:

Some Sierra Leoneans will look at it this way: it’s better to be in jail in Europe rather than living here in our country… If I am an international war criminal I won’t be put in jail with other criminals, my human rights will be defended…I will have nice food and nice clothes. I watch [the defendants] and I think they have accepted their situation… They are treated fine. They are just feeling free…

These court proceedings are the right way, but there is no question that they deserve to be thrown into a big pit, thrown into the fire!

That sentence won’t fly in most courts. But the young man spoke to a shocking injustice of international criminal trials—that the direct and indirect victims of conflict often live with trauma and deprivation long after the conflict ends, and even after convicted persons have served their sentence and returned to freedom.

One final point: Binta Mansaray, the registrar of the Special Court for Sierra Leone, made an interest comment in the Times article. She asked, “Yes, they have committed atrocities, but is the goal to reintegrate them back into society or is the goal to cut them off from society?”

I have not come across literature on the rehabilitation and reintegration of convicted war criminals. It’s an important topic. And I suspect it will be central to the sentencing of the first accused person at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, known as Duch. As I wrote in a Maclean’s article last year, Duch and his defense counsel repeatedly asked for forgiveness, claimed that he had been rehabilitated, and expressed a desire to rejoin Cambodian society. Are these outcomes possible, or palatable?