Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-06-Speech-4-149"
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"en.20070906.19.4-149"2
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"Mr President, those who strongly support the respect for human rights – Members of this House included – have fought hard to ensure that a Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up and notorious killers, like Charles Taylor and his criminal mob, faced trial and punishment. Those same people now view with disbelief the grim prospect that the effort to bring Charles Taylor to book may end up becoming a farce because the Special Court in The Hague ran out of money half way through the trial. Such an eventuality will no doubt be a serious blow to international justice and it will make our citizens lose all faith in the rule of law and order. Furthermore, it will send a very clear encouragement to criminals worldwide to pursue without fear their evil acts of committing genocides and other despicable atrocities against humanity.
Irrespective of the outcome of the plea to somehow keep this Special Court on Sierra Leone alive and functioning, one cannot help but raise the following issues.
Firstly, the USD 89 million requested by the court to conclude its operations is surely a vast amount of money. How come it is so vast? We all know that lawyers make a bomb, but not a nuclear bomb! Could not such a court operate on a more economically efficient budget? Are there perhaps expensive extravagances and gross inefficiencies resulting in large amounts of financial waste?
Secondly, how much did it cost for a very similar court in The Hague to try, to the extent that it did, Slobodan Milošević? Was the budget then not subject to limitations and why was that so? Is it perhaps different to commit a crime against humanity in Europe than in Africa?
These questions need answers, which, from my experience in this House, I know I am not going to get, and our citizens may have to resign themselves to believing not that the rule of law holds true but that money rules the law."@en1
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