Importance Of Fair Trial

1. INTRODUCTION
It is the most common perception of people to prosecute and punish those who commit war crimes or atrocities against humanity, nonetheless they should be given a fair trial. A fair trial, free from judicial bias and political pressures is a legal right. The fairness is not only the prerogative of the victims but also the accused for it is an important component of the mandate to the International Court of Justice. To interpret fairness one requires a more holistic concept not just limiting to judicial proceeding but one that effectively helps parties realise their rights under the Rome Statute. The concept of fairness in international criminal law is derived from its predecessor, international human rights law. The genesis of

But a fair trial was the most unpopular amongst the people. A Gallup poll in 1942 found that only 1% of Americans favoured the trial for Adolf Hitler, and a full 39% supporting the execution (with a 3% supporting a slow torture). Again in 1944 a poll was constituted wherein 88% Americans were in support of punishing the Japanese military leadership and only 4% believe in a fair trial. Even though these anecdotes have paved way for fair and just trials, still some pertinent questions are raised as to why should such offenders be dealt with kid gloves and be given the benefits of a fair trial; only to be incurring costly procedural safeguards and a possibility of a failure of convicting them, or are the ICC and other International Tribunals bound to be holding fair trials only to set an example to countries who still are ignorant and defiant to the standards of due process of law provided in more liberal democracies of the world today . If trials are unfair or perceived to be unfair, the ICC and the two ad-hoc tribunals would lose their legitimacy, for the measure is always the fairness in the

The paper will also look into the whether the international courts have the independence and powers to initiate and ensure a fair trial or are they limited by the paper based laws and political pressures. Further the paper will look at the plausible ways to counter fair-trial limiting tendencies that cloud the intentions of the international tribunals.

2. CRITERIA FOR A FAIR TRIAL
In order to assess whether the International courts and ad-hoc tribunals are fair in their approach or not, it’s important to analyse the standards by which these trials should be judged. To assess this is not as straightforward for these courts are sui generic in nature. The ad hoc courts for starters do not replicate the rules of any one single legal system. Further their statutes contain no choice of law provisions making the interpretation of law difficult for lawyers, judges and commentators.
There are various standards that can be used to assess this problem like binding obligations, human rights treaties to which the states are party etc. In order to counter these problems certain norms are referred to which are:
1. The laws of the countries of