allAfrica.com: Gambia: Justice Hassan B. Jallow Visits Home (Page 1 of 2)

On hearing of the presence of Justice Hassan B. Jallow in the country, we caught up with him at his family home in Bakau and asked him few questions, starting with the new book he has just published.

Can you share with the general public the content of the latest book you authored?

Thank you, the book is entitled the Law of the African Charter on Human and People's Rights.

It's essentially focussed on the drafting, the preparation of the African Charter dating back to early 70's when the OAU summit decided a group of experts be convened to draft the African Charter with the aim of promoting and protecting Human Rights in Africa.

The book traces the progress of the drafting of that Charter highlighting the issues which faced the group of experts who prepared the pleminary draft, as well as the state representatives who eventually met together at both the ministerial and heads of state levels to finally adopt the Charter. I try to look at the issues on how they revolved in the Charter.

The second part of the book also focuses on how the African Commission on Human Rights, created by the Charter, interprets and applies those rights that are being provided for and guaranteed by the Charter. That is essentially what the book focuses on.

I had the privilege of participating in the process of drafting it right from the initial stage as an expert and subsequently a government representative. Essentially the book provides a guide to Human Rights practitioners, lawyers and others as to the meaning, interpretation and scope of the various rights which have been protected by the African Charter.

You authored other books. Can you elaborate on them?

Well before that, I wrote two collections of essays which I entitled Essays and Speeches on Law Justice and Governance Selected Papers.

Thereafter I wrote a book on the law of evidence in The Gambia. I had hoped at that time to proceed on a little bit of teaching at the GTTI on the law programme. I hoped also to progress beyond the publication of law on evidence to one on criminal law and another on criminal procedure.

But the circumstances had made it difficult to proceed on those publications and I hope those instructors teaching law at UTG will be looking at not only those two areas but other areas of law and try to produce some publications which somehow highlight the local jurisprudence on that particular branches of the law.

As the Chief Prosecutor of the UN back War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda based in Arusha Tanzania, what does your job entail?

Well the tribunal was set up by the UN Security Council in 1994 with the mandate to prosecute those responsible for serious violation of human rights, and humanitarian law in Rwanda. You will recall that a genocide had occurred in Rwanda between April to July in 1994 resulting in the death of just over a million people, mostly Tutsis. So our mandate is to prosecute those responsible for the murders. Currently we are operating on a conclusion face of our cases in the first instance by the end of this year and for the appeal cases by the end of 2010 and then close down.

So far, we have completed the cases of 35 accused persons all of whom were senior members in the former Rwandan government out of which 29 have been convicted and the rest acquitted. We are currently in the trial face of another 24 accused and we have waiting in the wing another 9 accuse persons. We expect to finish most of the ongoing trials before the end of this year but some of the cases will go into 2009.

What is the relationship between the tribunal and the Rwandan government because at one time it criticise the tribunal for its 'slow pace' trial?

The relationship with the Rwandan government is presently very good. We continue to receive cooperation from them as most of our witnesses come from there.

We are given access to sites where the crimes occurred. At the moment we have a very good partnership as the tribunal is helping in developing the capacity of their legal system.

Our current completion strategy is on the transfer of cases to national jurisdictions. That is the transfer of some of our cases that does not involve high level persons to national jurisdictions where there is adequate guarantee of a fair trial and where the death penalty will not be applied. Rwanda is one of the jurisdictions and the request has been made for such cases to be transferred to Rwanda and we are waiting for a reply.

So it is a manifestation of the confidence we have in the justice system in Rwanda for a fair trial.

By doing so, don't you think the tribunal is failing in its responsibilities of ensuring a fair trial. This is because many are of the view that the Rwandan government might not give a fair trial to genocide suspects?

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