NEW SPECIAL COURT PRESIDENT FAVORS TAYLOR

C O N F I D E N T I A L FREETOWN 000460 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE FOR AF/W, S/CT USUN FOR A HILLMAN E.O. 12958: DECL: 06/04/2016 TAGS: PREL KAWC SL NL SUBJECT: NEW SPECIAL COURT PRESIDENT FAVORS TAYLOR TRANSFER, TRIAL CHAMBER RETENTION, QUICK APPEALS ¶1. (C) On June 5, Ambassador and PolOff met with the new presiding judge of the Special Court for Sierra Leone Appeals Chamber (and President of the Special Court),Justice George Gelaga King, who just took up a one-year term of office. King thanked the Ambassador for the U.S. financial contribution to the Court and assured him that the AFRC, RUF, and CDF trials are moving forward expeditiously. ¶2. (U) King said that once the appeals chamber starts its work in earnest, he plans on the process being speedier than the war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia or Rwanda. King said he is hoping to finish appeals for all three cases within 18 months, but it would require the appeals judges to work "around the clock." (Note: The appeals chamber currently gets paid by the day when it is called on to make occasional interlocutory decisions. The process requires the judges to correspond with one another over the internet and is "not convenient," King said. End Note.) ¶3. (C) King said that he is following in his predecessor's (Justice Raja Fernando from Sri Lanka) footsteps in arranging to transfer former Liberian President and Court indictee Charles Taylor to The Hague for security reasons. King said that the Government of Sweden has now agreed to take Taylor after he is tried, which removes the main obstacle to his transfer. King said that if the trial is to be held in the Hague that it would be important for the proceedings to be accessible to Sierra Leoneans, but agreed that holding the Taylor trial in Freetown would leave open the possibility of violence and disruption as well as an unproductive distraction from the 2007 presidential and parliamentary elections. ¶4. (U) King said that the AFRC trial chamber has been designated to hear the Taylor case. King said that the judges have made impressive progress in the AFRC trial so far and that they have done a good job in ensuring due process is observed while also moving the case forward expeditiously. The judges, he said, have made meticulous rulings, which makes them resistant to appeal. ¶5. (C) Comment: King's comments were about what we expected regarding the progress of the Court and Taylor's transfer, but his plans for the AFRC trial chamber differ from what ex-Prosecutor Desmond de Silva has said about the issue in the past. De Silva made it clear that he hoped that the Court would retain only Judge Teresa Doherty from the AFRC trial chamber and recruit different, "more competent" judges for the Taylor case. King clearly disagrees. End Comment. HULL