Internship in the Office of the Prosecutor, Special Court for Sierra Leone (Mora Johnson)
A lunch at a beachside restaurant in Scheveningen, outside of The Hague on a beautiful day in the summer of 2000 altered the course of my life. I had just been sitting in the courtroom of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, while a trial proceeded against a man accused of committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, during the Srebrenica massacre. After that incredible experience, I was having lunch (fish and chips) with two Canadians working for the Office of the Prosecutor at the Tribunal, who were nonchalantly describing their daily work, including the preparations for the case I had observed. I was struck by the intense contrast between the extraordinary jobs they held and their ordinary, nice, Canadianness. (“Could we have another Coke over here, please?” they would politely ask the waitress). I wondered, could I possibly, conceivably, do such a thing with my life? That day, I decided to leave my job and go to law school so that I could possibly pursue such work.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2003, where I had many lunches (fish and chips, usually) and after work drinks at beachside restaurants in Freetown, Sierra Leone, with people from the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). The SCSL is the war crimes tribunal set up by the United Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for atrocities committed in the civil war in Sierra Leone. The difference this time was that instead of marvelling at what a cool job those people were doing, I was also working alongside them in the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)!
I spent almost three months in Sierra Leone this past summer, as an intern in the Appellate Section (which doubles as the Legal Advisory section) in the OTP, sponsored by the UofT Faculty of Law International Human Rights Program. I will try to describe the experience in a few paragraphs.
Firstly, just spending a few months in a place where a state failed, rebels came out of the jungle, attacked villages and committed unspeakable atrocities for ten long years, can all be a life-altering experience. One of the ugly hallmarks of the conflict was the amputation of arms and legs of innocent civilians by the rebel groups. Initially, hands were amputated by the rebels to deter citizens from voting, or punishing those who had, but later, amputations, like rape and random murder, were used to terrorize whole villages and communities. Now, amputees are part of the post-conflict Sierra Leone landscape: they beg for survival on street corners, at the beach, their lives altered forever. This context, along with the work I did, changed me from an even-handed, disinterested law student, to a fiercely passionate advocate. I desperately wanted the law to work in favour of these victims of war. The frailties of the international legal system struck me as deeply tragic rather than merely inconvenient.
Secondly, the work at OTP was phenomenally interesting: I worked mostly at the Appellate section, where we researched really fascinating public international law issues and drafted Prosecution motions and responses, and I also did a bit of work for the Trial teams. The trials hadn’t begun yet, but preliminary motions were being litigated by the nine defendants in custody. Essentially, they were filing motions asking the court to quash all or particular counts in their indictments on the basis that the court didn’t have jurisdiction over those offences (or over them). For example, one accused claimed that he couldn’t be prosecuted for offences for which he received a domestic amnesty (as promised in the Lomé Accord, a peace agreement between the rebels and government). This raises the public international law question of whether a domestic amnesty can preclude an international tribunal from prosecuting international crimes.
One rather quiet day, a motion landed on our desks, filed by Charles Taylor, the (then) President of Liberia. He was requesting the Court to quash his indictment on the ground of Head of State immunity. I was privileged to be able to help draft the substantive law portion of the Prosecution Response. Needless to say, crafting legal arguments in Prosecutor v. Charles Taylor, arguing that this man who fomented conflicts in many countries and who was responsible for an egregious amount of human suffering, should not be able to invoke Head of State Immunity before an international tribunal, represents a high point in my life. It certainly exceeds any reasonable expectations of summer job experiences.
Lastly, the whole experience of living in a different and unusual place was really rewarding. I met pretty amazing people: war correspondents who were helicoptering in and out of Liberia (which at the time was still at war), humanitarian aid workers who spent months at a time in refugee camps, and of course some pretty interesting people at the Special Court itself. Many of them had worked for other war crimes tribunals. One guy in OTP had been on the Rwanda Tribunal arrests team, tracking down indictees living in other countries. He told me about bursting into people’s homes or offices to arrest very high-ranking members of the former genocidal regime. After handcuffing the accused, they would read out the indictment to him: “You are under arrest for genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, … ” (He said most of the accuseds put their heads down and went quietly.) Of course, he’s totally hooked on war crimes work: he joked it would be hard to go back to reviewing patent applications after that!
I also got out of the office, outside Freetown, to see some of the most beautiful places I had ever been. The beaches were pristine and paradisiacal. I took hikes with friends into the tropical rainforests of Sierra Leone, including to a chimpanzee reserve (where a large alpha male chimp threw rocks at us). One beautiful day I took a boat ride deep into the jungle in an old wooden boat driven along silently by a single oarsman standing on the stern. We saw monkeys playing in trees, whole schools of jumping fish, and fluorescent birds and butterflies fluttering above.
To sum up, my summer was incredible. I don’t regret for a moment that I wasn’t working in some Bay Street firm doing corporate law. I strongly urge any students interested in international human rights to pursue an internship. There is a whole world out there of fascinating and deeply meaningful work.
Mora Johnson
Photograph (from left to right): Abdul Tejan-Cole, Appellate Counsel; Mora Johnson, Appellate Intern; Desmond de Silva, Deputy Prosecutor.