Red Hands

Note: All information found here is available in the public trial record, excepting esoteric WWII factoids.

When I met him, I first noticed his impeccable fingernails – manicured and buffed to a dull sheen. It made me recall how Goring had hands lacquered with red fingernail polish when he was brought into Nuremberg. It's ironic that someone with such clean hands should be accused of such dirty work.

But that is exactly the problem. Establishing a direct link to prove the gravest of charges will not be easy to do. A smart leader won't have red-handed guilt like a weapon-brandishing Interahamwe; instead the culpability will be more delicate.

But I'm continually surprised at what I see in court – for example, seating a witness who claimed the Accused had a meeting to pass down incriminating orders, when there is irrefutable proof that this defendant was far outside of the country at that time. Cross-examination implies that the problem might be with the incentive system for major witnesses. There are thousands of young men in jail for war crimes in Rwanda, and many have been there for a decade or more, without charge. This witness is only 32 years old. The prisons rank amongst the worst in the world. The attorney insinuated that testifying against a high government official could result in the commuting of a sentence to time served or even freedom. Perhaps people are coming forward with fabricated stories, out of base desperation.

Listening to the testimony is the most difficult part. I often bite at my cuticles until they bleed a bit. Often, witnesses plainly describe murders and rapes they've committed, embedded within mundane details of geography and daily events. One man was confused about how many lives he'd taken – around 5, maybe 6 or 7, if you don't count the child he had just held down. At times like these, the courtroom, the fancy robes and the procedural pomp seem so far away from those dusty days and so irrelevant. I wanted to hate him, I wanted to know if he was sorry, I wanted to understand or to pity. Counsel gently asked for a recess so the witness could recover from a stomachache. I had one too.

What my time here has done is add more nuance to my point-of-view, which makes it harder to be a good little zealot. I've begun to concretely realize how integral humane treatment of the accused and the guilty is for reaching true justice. Injustice and inhumanity -- even when applied to those who violate these tenets themselves, to those who our whole beings may viscerally protest do not deserve better -- may breed further inequities that themselves impede truth and justice. The way I see it, the Defense's battle – and perhaps the challenge for the Tribunal itself – might not be getting the accused cleared of grievous charges, but rather making sure that they are charged with the crimes that they actually committed. Otherwise we risk a garishly painted justice, pretty but unnatural like Nazi-red fingernails.