The take down: case studies regarding "lawfare" in international criminal justice: the West African experience.

• Author: Crane, David M.
• Position: Symposium: Lawfare

The law is a powerful tool. Some say it can be used as a weapon. That power was used to bring down the most disruptive and evil warlord in Africa and his co-defendants not just by the stroke of a pen on March 3, 2003, but in the execution of two operations, Operation Justice and its follow-on Operation Rope. This Article uses these operations as case studies to show that the law can be used as a powerful weapon.

1. THE SITUATION II. THE MISSION III. THE EXECUTION A. Case Study Number One. Operation Justice B. Case Study Number Two: Operation Rope IV. REFLECTIONS: THE RULE OF LAW IS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE RULE OF THE GUN! I. THE SITUATION

   The civil war in Sierra Leone ripped apart an entire region of West Africa. Spawned by the President of Libya, Colonel Muammar Ghaddafi, and supported by Presidents Blase Compare of Burkina Faso and Charles Taylor of Liberia, this take-over of an entire country for their own personal criminal gain was a rare event in conflict not seen since the middle ages. The West African Joint Criminal Enterprise was designed to support the geo-political takeover of West Africa by Ghaddafi where surrogates such as Compare and Taylor, among others, would control the region on his behalf. Fueled by diamonds, gold, and timber, these commodities were traded for cash to pad the coffers of three heads of state, gun runners, diamond dealers, and boy-generals, and to buy weapons to take down not only Burkina Faso, Liberia, but Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast, and Guinea. (1)

   The result of this enterprise was the complete destruction of two countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where women and children were brutalized and forced into the rebel forces as either bush wives or child soldiers respectively, and the murder, rape, and maiming of around 1.2 million human beings occurred. The civil war in Sierra Leone was indicative of the horror of a succession of internal armed conflicts, which saw the chopping off of limbs as a way to intimidate and terrorize the populace into submission. The world recoiled in horror. (2)

2. THE MISSION

   In an attempt to stop this horror, the President of Sierra Leone asked for help from the United Nations. (3) A second peace treaty was signed in 1999 which abated the conflict somewhat and U.N. peacekeepers were inserted into Sierra Leone to enforce the peace. (4) After a shaky start which saw even the peacekeepers victimized by the rebels, the conflict came to an end in 2002. (5) It was only during those years that the full extent of the crimes committed in Sierra Leone was understood. At the request of the Secretary General of the United Nations, the Security Council gave Kofi Annan the authority to explore various mechanisms to seek justice for the tens of thousands of victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone. (6)

   The result was the world's first international hybrid tribunal. (7) It was a bold new experiment in delivering international justice. The war crimes weary international community was loath to create another cumbersome and expensive ad-hoc tribunal such as in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Special Court for Sierra Leone was designed to be more efficient and effective. Created by the United Nations and the Republic of Sierra Leone, the court would essentially be of the United Nations, but not in the United Nations, thus freeing it of the byzantine administrative rules of that body.

   The court would be located in Freetown, right at the scene of the crimes. Its mandate would be simple and workable: prosecute those who bore the greatest responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the civil war in Sierra Leone from 1996 to the present. (8) This allowed the Prosecutor to narrow the range of possible defendants in the hopes that the investigations, indictments, and trials would take less time than its sister tribunals in Arusha and The Hague. (9)

   In the summer of 2002, the Prosecutor and the Registrar started to set up the Special Court and began the justice process for the people of Sierra Leone. (10) Within seven months, the Prosecutor had indicted and arrested the majority of those who bore the greatest responsibility. Within a year, all of the defendants were in custody, arraigned, and the trial process began.

3. THE EXECUTION

   The Prosecutor organized his prosecutorial strategy with a ten-step process with key milestones built-in to ensure proper management and execution of the mandate given to him by the U.N. Security Council. In that strategy was a series of planned operations designed like a military and political operation using the full spectrum of tools in a legal battlefield to include diplomatic initiatives, information operations, and military support culminating in a complete tactical assault on the potential defendants using deception, surprise, and precision of action based on timely and actionable intelligence.

   The first operation, Operation Justice, was essentially a deception, information, and military operation, the second, Operation Rope, a psychological and diplomatic/political operation. Both were executed by the Office of the Prosecutor as a legal weapon to bring those who bore the greatest responsibility to justice.

   1. Case Study Number One: Operation Justice

      The potential defendants were all living in and around Freetown and surrounding districts. Three defendants of the thirteen contemplated for arrest were in Liberia, including the sitting President Charles G. Taylor. All were the current or former heads of the warring factions in the civil war in Sierra Leone. All were assumed armed and dangerous. One of the defendants was the sitting Minister of the Interior of Sierra Leone who had technical control of the arresting units that would help execute Operation Justice. (11) Organizations involved in the arrest operation were members of the investigations section, Office of the Prosecutor, the Sierra Leonean National

      Police, the United Nations Peacekeepers in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), land and naval forces of the United Kingdom, as well as various embassies, to include the United States and the United Kingdom.

      The mission given to the organizations and units was the takedown of all of the targeted defendants in Sierra Leone via a surprise arrest operation and transfer to Bonthe Island where the Office of the Registrar, under the cover of a rehabilitation project, had constructed a detention facility.

      The planning and execution of Operation Justice took place over several months beginning in late September 2002 and ended a week prior to the take down of the defendants on March 10, 2003. A security group was set up by the Prosecutor under the auspices of the British High Commission, which met as needed, but at a minimum of once a month. Members included the Ambassador from the U.S., Inspector General of the Sierra Leone National Police, Chief of Staff of the Force within UNAMSIL, Commanding General of the British Training Command in Sierra Leone, British High Commissioner, and Prosecutor. No one else knew of the existence of this group. Within the group the information was specifically compartmentalized, each member only kept aware of specific requirements as needed for security purposes. (12)

      The Chief of Investigations in the Office of the Prosecutor had overall control of the arrest operation, including its planning and execution. During this planning stage, the Prosecutor initiated an information operation to confuse and distract the various defendants and arrestees from the real operation. Each month the Prosecutor would meet with the local, regional, and international media and tell them truthfully that the case was complex, worldwide in-scope, and he revealed to the public that the anticipated opening of the trials was at least a year away. The intent was to ensure that the various arrestees would not flee or the Minister of Interior, a target, would not hamper the investigation or become aware of the planning for Operation Justice.

      While this was ongoing, the normal routine of setting up of an international tribunal continued for all to see. Along with this, an old jail on Bonthe Island was being refurbished under the guise of a legacy project for the Sierra Leone National Police, when in reality the...