hrw: the quality of justice

"
The story of the day in Iraq is of course the shoe-throwing journalist, whose exploits have dominated the Arab media cycle and will be the enduring image of Bush's final official visit to Iraq. It would be a pity if that completely crowded out attention to the devastating report on the Central Criminal Court of Iraq released today by Human Rights Watch. Joseph Logan and Michael Walid Hanna conclude after a rigorous investigation that the CCCI

is an institution that is seriously failing to meet international standards of due process and fair trials. Defendants often endure long periods of pretrial detention without judicial review, and are not able to pursue a meaningful defense or challenge evidence against them. Abuse in detention, typically with the aim of extracting confessions, appears common, thus tainting court proceedings in those cases.

The report investigates a wide range of failures by the Court to adhere to international law or to its own rules, including dispassionate accounts of coerced confessions and secret witnesses. The report puts detail and texture on to an overarching sense of institutional dysfunction which should surprise no-one at this point. "
Abu Aardvark