Source: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:GHSGR:2007:BC1757
Timestamp: 2019-06-24 10:24:40
Document Index: 56927315

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 15', '§ 26', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8']

ECLI:NL:GHSGR:2007:BC1757, voorheen LJN BC1757, Gerechtshof &#39;s-Gravenhage, 22-006120-07
ECLI:NL:GHSGR:2007:BC1757
22-006120-07
Vertaling WIM-zaak LJN BC0287 in de Engelse taal.
Translation of LJN BC0287.
Docketnumber:	22-006120-07
Casenumber:	09-750007-07
Sentence Date:	17 December 2007
DEFENDED ACTIONg
From the judgement of the court of first instance, this court of appeal derives the following summary description of the charges which the public prosecutor’s office brought against the suspect.
1.	Suspect is on trial for involvement in a number of serious offences (which allegedly) have been committed in Rwanda in April 1994. The charges directed at the suspect are contained in two writs of summuns which will be handled in a joint action.
2.	Suspect was summoned for the first time for the case with case number 09/750009-06 for a pro forma session on 21 November 2006. This case was again handled pro forma on 12 February 2007 and 5 March 2007, and also in the session of 11 May 2007, which was continued on 16 and 21 May 2007. This summons contains the following complex of facts:
I	Ambulance murders, in short, the killing of a number of women and children who were being transported in an ambulance;
II	Seventh Day Adventists buildings Mugonero, in short, the killing of and/or inflicting of (grievous) bodily and/or mental injury to a large group of people who had fled to these buildings;
III	Taking of hostages/ humiliating/ threatening of the family [A].
3.	Suspect was summoned for the first time for the case with case number 09/750007-07 for the hearing of 11 May 2007 (continued on 16 and 21 May 2007). This second summons contains the following complex of facts:
V	Removing of and murdering of the grandchildren of the family [B].
4. The whole of this complex of facts has – in short – been charged as the principal charge of war crimes(Section 8 Act on laws governing war crimes) and as the alternative charge that of torture (sections 1 and 2 Convention against Torture Implementations Act).
3. In the court of first instance, the public prosecutor was
barred from prosecuting the charge of genocide, formulated in the second summons as count 1(case number 09-750007-07)on the grounds of – in short – lack of jurisdiction for this count. The public prosecutor filed an appeal against the judgement on 1 August 2007.
Allowability of the appeal of the public prosecutor’s office
5. During the hearing in the court of appeal on 3 December 2007 the counsel for defence pleaded that the appeal of the public prosecutor’s office should be dismissed.To that end, counsel for the defence argued – in essence – that the decision of the court of first instance is an intermediary decision, which according to the opinion of the defence, is not open to appeal.
The court of appeal already ruled on this defence during the hearing in appeal.The court of appeal
– with reference to the judgement of the Supreme Court of 13 January 2004 (LJN: AN 9235) – judges that in view of the wording and the description of the decision in the judgement of the court of first instance, it concerns a final judgement as defined by section 138 of the Code of Criminal Procedure against which,on the grounds of section 404, first subsection,of the Code of Criminal Procedure, an appeal may be lodged. Subsequently,the court of appeal rejected this defence.
Furthermore, during counsel’s speech for the defence it was argued that the public prosecutor’s appeal should be dismissed on the ground that the document of appeal had not been submitted within the required time frame as laid down in section 410 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The court of appeal considers that section 410 of the Code of Criminal Procedure gives the court of appeal the possibility to decide for dismissal of the appeal.
Allowability of the public prosecutor’s office to prosecute
6. Counsel for the defence has pleaded, consistent with his plea in the first instance, that the public prosecutor’s office should also be barred from prosecuting the suspect on other grounds than those in connection with the jurisdiction.
The court of appeal rejects this defence. Insofar as the court of appeal thinks to be able to fathom the underlying grounds for the argument, the motivation of this decision will be omitted for the sake of efficiency. After all, the public prosecutor’s office is barred from prosecuting the suspect in the matter of genocide for reasons connected to jurisdiction, as will hereafter be considered and decided.
7. Counsel for the defence, after an earlier request to that effect at the beginning of the hearing in appeal, which was rejected by the court of appeal,repeated his request for an adjournment of the proceedings during his speech. Counsel for the defence argues to that end that he wishes to have a number of witnesses heard with respect to – in short – the actual procedure around the prosecution referral by the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal to the Dutch Judicial Authorities. Moreover, according to counsel’s argument, the opinions of experts issued recently by the public prosecutor and introduced at the hearing, only raises new questions. These require study, for which the defence should be awarded time. Counsel would also like to have more time to respond to the position taken by the advocate general. With respect to that, the court of appeal took the following grounds.The legal questions under discussion during the appeals trial are in essence the same as those of the trial in the first instance. Therefore, Counsel has had ample time to (also further) consider these questions. Counsel had moreover already known for a month that the court of appeal had asked the advocate general to issue an expert’s report on the aspects of the practices in conventional-law connected to the contacts maintained between the Prosecutor and the Dutch judicial authorities.To that extent the – at admittedly short notice before the hearing – issued expert’s reports cannot have constituted a surprise for him. Also in view of the small size of the last report of the Prosecutor, one side with an annex of five pages,and the circumstance that the trial on appeal was interrupted for an hour in order to study the new report, the court of appeal once again rejects counsel’s request. That same fate was shared by the request to hear a number of witnesses since the court of appeal considers to be sufficiently informed about the contacts between the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal and the Dutch justice authorities.The necessity of hearing these witnesses has consequently not been shown.
8. The suspect, who applied for political asylum in the Netherlands in 1998, was arrested on 7 August 2006 in Amsterdam on suspicion of his having committed war crimes. His prosecution was initially founded on that (cf. the first summons, see § 2 under 2). By means of a letter dated 11 August 2006 the Public Prosecutor informed the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal of the
arrest of the suspect. On 29 September 2006 the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal subsequently submitted a written request to take the prosecution over in the matter of genocide, committed on two of the described incidents in the request (defined in the first initiatory summons under 1. and 2. ) and “similar facts on other dates between 6 April 1994 and 17 July 1994
in the territory of Rwanda”. This request was made through the Dutch Ambassador in Tanzania to the Minister of Justice, who authorized the public prosecutor’s office by means of a letter dated 27 November 2006 to take over the criminal prosecution from the Tribunal. On 5 January 2007 the public prosecutor demanded (for the second time) that a judicial inquiry be initiated, also related to the suspicion of genocide (cf. § 2 under 5 above).
In a reaction to a written request from the advocate general dated 23 November 2007, the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal notifies by email of 30 November 2007 among other things, that he had come to an understanding with the Dutch authorities with regards to the referral of the prosecution of the suspect with respect to genocide.
9. As already indicated above (§ 2), in the initiatory writs of summons the suspect has been accused of a set of five serious offenses which allegedy were committed by him as Rwandan in Rwanda in the year 1994. Each of these charges have,on the one hand, been worded as war crime (or torture),and on the other hand as genocide. The court came to the conclusion that there was no jurisdiction for the facts formulated as genocide and consequently barred the public prosecutor’s office from prosecuting those facts.
10.	The court of appeal reached the same decision as the court of first instance, though partly on somewhat different grounds. Partly with respect to that, the court of appeal will reverse the judgement whereof appealed. With some regularity hereafter, the court of appeal will adopt the considerations of the court of first instance by referring to the latter’s considerations in it’s judgement. The judgement of the court of first instance has been published on “www.rechtspraak.nl” under LJN-number BB8462.
11. Original jurisdiction can, according to the court of first instance (grounds for judgement 15 through 27), be derived from the provisions in the sections 2 through 4 and 5 through 7 of the Criminal Code, or from section 5 of Genocide Convention Implementation Act or section 3 of the War Crimes Act. The appellate court – just as the court, the public prosecutor and the defence – finds that the regulations with respect to the charge of genocide lack applicability and so no jurisdiction can be derived from them. In that respect the appellate court refers to the above mentioned considerations of the court of first instance.
According to the advocate general’s opinion, maintaining the international legal order can and must be regarded as such a national interest.
In addition to above mentioned considerations of the court, especially grounds for judgement 22 through 25, the appellate court would like to point out that should the advocate general’s point of view with respect to section 3 sub 2 of the War Crimes Act be followed, this could in fact lead to creating universal jurisdiction. In the view of the appellate court this broadening of jurisdiction and the many jurisdictional conflicts which would ensue from such an interpretation of the term ‘Dutch interest’ could not, in reason, have been the intention of the legislator.
12. Just as the court,(grounds for judgement 29 through 32) the appellate court finds that also no more jurisdiction can be derived from conduct charged before the International Crimes Act came into force (which in section 3 creates a secondary universal jurisdiction with respect to genocide).In connection with legal certainty, the legislator – explicitely - did not wish for a retrospective effect (ex post facto).
13.	Just as the court, (grounds for judgement 33 through 44) the appellate court finds that neither in international law a basis for jurisdiction can be found.
Secondary jurisdiction on the basis of section 4 Criminal
14.	Finally jurisdiction could be derived – in secondary or alternative form – from the provisions of section 4a Criminal Code. The court of first instance came to the conclusion that this section lacks applicability in the current case.
15.	Section 4a, first subsection, of the Criminal Code (in force since 19 July 1985) reads:
a) mention can be made of a ‘state’
d) a convention can be designated “from which the competence for prosecution for The Netherlands ensues”.
16.	With respect to the requirement mentioned under point a), the appellate court judges, as does the court that – in view of the status of the Rwanda Tribunal – on itself there is much to say for a favourable, ‘functional’ explanation of this requirement which leads to regarding this Tribunal as ‘state’ within the meaning of section 4a Criminal Code. On the other hand however, there are opposing considerations which bring the appellate court – other than the court – to the conclusion that such a functional explanation may not be accepted, so that on that ground alone this section loses its applicability.
First of all, the court took the nature of the requirement at issue into consideration. In the opinion of the appellate court, a jurisdictional regulation can be compared (to a certain extent) to a penalization and a penalty standard; that is why such a regulation must meet the requirements of recognizability. To equate a body of the United Nations with a ‘state’ in the meaning of section 4a Criminal Code does not meet that requirement for recognizability. Just like the court (grounds for judgement 39) the appellate court points towards the grounds for cassation developed by N.Keijzer, Master of Laws, at the time advocate general, for the Supreme Court’s judgement of 18 September 2001 on the December Murders¹. Moreover, legal assistance between states is based on reciprocity, and it is exactly this mutuality in the relationship between the Tribunal and The Netherlands
which is largely absent, seen the ‘vertical’ character of that relation.
“Furthermore the Statute of the Tribunal obligates States to judicial and police cooperation with the Tribunal, in the scope of (…) collecting evidence (…) and transferring suspects to the Tribunal (article 29 Statute).
(…) In order to fully comply with these obligations a specific legislation is required. The existing legal regulations with respect to international criminal cooperation are tailored to interstate cooperation and not to cooperation with an international Tribunal. This regards the extradition and the so-called small legal assistance as well as the implementation of sentences from other judges than the Dutch. The present bill intends to offer an addition to the existing legislation.”
“In this respect it almost goes without saying that pursuant to section 2, first subsection of this bill,the regulated version for international legal assistance, unlike the classic extradition, provides for the surrender of a person claimed, to an international body, pursuant to a Resolution of the United Nations Security Council, and not, as usual, to another sovereign state. This justifies an own regulation, which is provided by this bill”.
Although the appellate court agrees with the court (grounds for judgement 55) that at the time there was no thought of referral of prosecution to The Netherlands, this does not make for a forceful argument to presently apply a teleologic interpretation without sufficient basis. Even the circumstance shown in the decision of the Rwanda Tribunal in the (comparable) Bagaragaza case that the Dutch gouvernment took the view that the Rwanda Tribunal does fall under the term ‘state’ in section 4a Criminal Code, does not bring the appellate court to a different judgement.
18. The above (see § 15) under c mentioned condition of section 4a Criminal Code has also been met now the appellate court – along with the court – does not have any doubts either about the competence of the Prosecutor of the Tribunal to refer the prosecution in this case, in view of his complete and exclusive prosecution competence as body of the Tribunal (based on the articles 10 and 15, second paragraph, of the Statute). The appellate court thereby also considered that in the Tribunal’s described procedure in article 11bis of the ‘Rules of Procedure and Evidence’ (RPE) for referral of prosecution according to the phrasing only concerns cases which already have been brought before the Tribunal.
In his request dated 29 September 2006 for referral of the prosecution in the present case, the Prosecutor also mentioned that the referral of such ‘un-indicted cases’ lies within his competence on the basis of the Statute. The appellate court finds no reason to question this information, also in view of paragraph 39 of the letter dated 29 May 2006 of the President of the Tribunal to the Security Council of the United Nations, about the Completion Strategy of the Tribunal.
19. The conclusion can be drawn that referral of prosecution is only one of the forms known to international legal assistance in criminal matters, which in itself does not require a conventional basis. This requirement indeed does apply, however, as shown in section 4a of the Criminal Code, if The Netherlands has no original jurisdiction and the referral of prosecution must create (secondary) jurisdiction.; the court (grounds for judgement 61 through 65) ruled – also based on the legal history the court gave – that certain requirements of specificity must be demanded of a convention which carries this legal consequence: “the competence to prosecute and bring to trial must ensue from a convention including explicit agreements (italics appellate court) about referral of prosecution rights and at least a regulation must have been set up with respect to the cases where referral is possiblel” (grounds for judgement 65).
“Additions to the rules of the Dutch Criminal laws with respect to penalization and liability to prosecution cannot be found in the prosposed stipulations. To settle these subjects in view of international referral of prosecutions, a convention would be the appropriate place. That is also the case for the expansion of the competence of the Dutch criminal court judge, for which not the newly to be inserted section 4a of the Criminal Code, but the appropriate convention forms the basis.”
As it is, the public prosecutor is correct in pointing out that the conventions mentioned in section 552hh of the Code of Criminal Procedure (which in the case of refusal to extradite, demand the initiation of prosecution by referring the case to the prosecutions authority, according to the proverb “aut dedere aut judicare”) do not contain a detailed system of rules.But the States involved are obliged in view of that possible trial, to make sure that the competence of prosecution for the facts meant in those conventions is guaranteed, for which purpose the indicated section was inserted into the Code of Criminal Procedure. Now that the conventions only relate to (a limited group) of specific offences, a certain limitation is also encountered in them (namely with respect to ‘the cases to which’ the regulation applies).
21. The prosecution also draws attention to the formulation
of section 4a: the competence of prosecution must “ensue” from the convention, which, following the explanatory memorandum of the bill, the prosecution paraphrases as ‘result from’.
22. The prosecution also referred to a) the Charter of the United Nations in connection with the Statute of the Rwanda Tribunal (and the relevant resolutions and the Completion Strategy) and b) the Genocide Convention,as being a convention in the sense of section 4a of the Criminal Code, “from which the prosecution competence ... ensues”.
23.	With respect to the Charter of the United Nations, the Statute of the Rwanda Tribunal and the applicable Rules of Procedure and Evidence the following can be established.
The prosecution was correct in pointing this out, thereby referring to the articles 25 and 103 of the Charterndvest, which read as follows:
24.	In this respect the appellate court points out a number of more specific stipulations:
1.	The International Tribunal for Rwanda and national courts shall have concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute persons for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of Rwanda and Rwandan citizens for such violations committed in the territory of the neighbouring States, between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1994.
2.	The International Tribunal for Rwanda shall have the primacy over the national courts of all States. At any stage of the procedure, the International Tribunal for Rwanda may formally request national courts to defer to its competence in accordance with the present Statute and the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of the International Tribunal for Rwanda.
2.	States shall comply without undue delay with any request for assistance or an order issued by a Trial Chamber, including but not limited to:
c) For the Dutch legislation the Establishment Act Yugoslavia Tribunal is especially important (see
note 2). This Act, of which the following mentioned stipulations also apply to the Rwanda Tribunal, stipulates among other things:
2.	The sections 552i,552j,552n,552o through 552q – with the exception of the reference in section 552p, fourth subsection, to section 552d, second subsection – of the Code of Criminal Procedure and section 51, first and fourth subsection, of the Extradition Act are mutatis mutandis applicable.
3.	Representatives of the Tribunal will be permitted upon request to be present at the execution of the requests,and to have questions presented to the persons involved in the execution of the requests, as meant in the first subsection.
4.	The Dutch authorities in charge of the execution of the requests for legal assistance are responsible for the safety of the persons involved therin and are authorized to that purpose to set conditions to the manner in which requests for legal assistance are executed.
5. Upon request of the Tribunal the issued orders at final and conclusive sentence by the Tribunal for refund as meant in section 24, third subsection, of the Statute , can be executed in The Netherlands. The sections 13, 13a, 13b and 13d through 13f – with the exception of the reference in section 13d, second subsection, to section 552d, second subsection, of the Code of Criminal Procedure – of the sentence transfer enforcement Act are mutatis mutandis applicable.
That jurisdiction issue is extensively assessed (with other issues) by the Rwanda Tribunal before a request for referral to a state becomes effective. In this respect, the appellate court points towards the decision of the Trial Chamber III of 19 May 2006 , in which the Tribunal refused to refer prosecution of Bagaragaza to Norway because Norway did not have ‘jurisdiction’ ratione materiae (in the sense of penalization of genocide) and could ‘only’ prosecute on the basis of general offences. Norway did (according to note 11 of this decision) ratify the Genocide Convention, but had not implemented it in its national legislation.
The prescription of Rule 11 bis RPE relates to the referral of prosecution to a state and insofar does not encounter a basis in article 28 of the Statute. From the obvious connection with the hereafter (§ 26) mentioned Completion Stategy in compliance with the instruction of the Security Council the appellate court deduces that Rule 11bis RPE finds direct basis in the Charter. But this does not lead to the Prosecutor having more competence as a result of that Rule or that connected obligations for states should be deduced from it than those which follow from the wording of that Rule. And in Rule 11bis A, under(iii), the explicit starting point is - as already has been established above – the referral to a state that already has (original) jurisdiction.
The appellate court would in this respect like to refer to the ‘short paper’ submitted by the advocate general during the appeals trial, enclosed as annex to above mentioned email message from the Prosecutor of 30 November 2007 (see § 8), with respect to the relationship between article 28 of the Statute of the Rwanda Tribunal and article 11 bis of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence. In this paper attention is given among other things to the case law of the Appeals Chamber (of the Yugoslavia Tribunal) with respect to these articles. From this case law, the deduction can be made that the Appeals Chamber holds the opinion that no obligation exists for the states, neither on the basis of article 28 of the Statute of the Tribunal, nor on the basis of article 11bis of the Rules of Procedure and Evidence, for referral of prosecution by the Tribunal.
c) In the prior mentioned Establishing Act an attempt was made to “translate” the ensuing obligations from the Statute of the Rwanda Tribunal, into the Dutch situation, taking the other Dutch legislation into account.
In this way, the Establishing Act drew a bridge between the extradition laws, the laws governing the transfer of sentence enforcement and the regulation with respect to the (general) international small legal assistance in criminal matters. The appellate court – like the court (grounds for judgement 77) – cannot conclude otherwise than that the Dutch legislator (intentionally or by mistake) ommitted to regulate the referral of prosecution to The Netherlands. The latter could (other than at the referral for execution of the Tribunal decisions ) also still take place without a convention, but then without the case law expansion provided for in section 4a Criminal Code.
Just as the court, the appellate court is of the opinion that the judge is not competent to fill this – at present apparently so experienced by the prosecutor’s office – void by means of in this respect also only teleological interpretation.
26. The Prosecutor’s request is prompted according to the explanation by the so-called Completion Strategy of the Rwanda Tribunal, which is aimed at – in accordance with instruction of the Security Council (Resolution 1503 (2003) of 28 August 2003) – concentrating on the “most senior leaders suspected of being most responsible” for the crimes in regards of which the Tribunal is competent, finalizing the proceedings not later than 2010 and for that reason to transfer the “intermediate- and lower-rank accused” to “competent national jurisdictions”. So also the text of this Resolution cannot create any relevant obligation, now that The Netherlands does not have the required (original) jurisdiction (competence).
2.Prosecution can also take place, if the suspect only after commission of the fact, becomes a Dutch national.
At the time, the legislator, however, chose ‘only’ to apply an active personality principle to the Implementations Act. It is important to establish that by doing that, The Netherlands did not underestimate its conventional obligations, as can be deduced from the recent decision of the International Court of Justice of 26 February 2007 . Paragraph 442 of this decision reads:
“The court’s consideration that she is faced with a void in the existing regulations,which she cannot solve by means of a reasonable interpretation of the law, is based on the phrasing of above mentioned multilateral conventions. To the extent that the court considers that at the time of the indicted facts there was no national legal provision applicable which provided for jurisdiction with respect to genocide, it must be stated that this non-applicability results from the choice of the Dutch legislator and the position of the international law at the time not to establish broad extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Currently The Netherlands has, on the basis of the International Crimes Act, which came into force on 1 October 2003, a broader jurisdiction regulation for, among other things, the crime of genocide. The legislator explicitely chose, at the realization of this act, not to award retroactive force to this broadend jurisdiction regulation.”
28. In view of the manner in which our country implemented the Genocide Convention, the appellate court is not able to see that this convention could now – via section 4a Criminal Code – create jurisdiction. The appellate court again – perhaps unnecessarily – points out that the legislator has a choice at the implementation of conventions as to what extent he wishes to implement the optional obligations to the Dutch legislation.
‘Mini-convention’?
In the above in § 8 described correspondence of the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal with organs of the State of the Netherlands there are in itself certain reference points to be found for the supposition that both organs have made agreements about the referral of the current case, so that the question could arise whether it was the intention to enter into a ‘convention’ (in a substantive sense).
The prosecutor’s office is of the opinion that this question can be answered affirmatively now that there is consensus and there is sufficient stipulation about what the subject of the agreement is. In the prosecutor’s office view, there are grounds present to speak of a convention in the sense of section 4a CC. To support this point of view, the prosecutor’s office refers inter alia to the requested advice of 30 November van 2007, given by K. Brölmann, senior lecturer International Law at the University of Amsterdam. In this advice it is inter alia concluded that – based on the conventional freedom of form - the international law does not oppose to viewing the correspondence between the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal and the Minister of Justice as an international legal agreement or ‘convention’ in the sense of international law. Brölmann reaches this conclusion on the basis of the following: The agreement between the Dutch Minister and the Prosecutor of the Tribunal rests on (i) mutual communications; (ii) containing legal effect; (iii) between international legal entities, (iv) represented by (in accordance with relevant internal laws) ‘organs’ who from a perspective of international law may be deemed to dispose of competence to enter into conventions. With this, according to Brölmann, the agreement conforms to the definition of ‘convention’.
Furthermore, the prosecutor’s office draws attention to the reaction of the Prosecutor of the Rwanda Tribunal as shown in § 8. In answer to the written request of the advocate general, the Prosecutor gave the information that an agreement was reached with the Dutch authorities concerning the transfer of prosecution of the suspect.
“.. there was an agreement between the Prosecutor of the ICTR and authorities in the Netherlands concerning the transfer of the case against [suspect] as far as proceedings for the crimes of genocide are concerned”.
Now that the appellate court sees no reason to doubt the authority of the Prosecutor to make those kind of arrangments, the appellate court assumes that in this manner an – extremely form-free – convention was entered upon between the Prosecutor and the Dutch Minister of Justice.
Subsequently the question arises whether such a – form-free – convention can be regarded as a convention in the sense of section 4a CC. The appellate court answers this question negatively. To that end, the appellate court considers inter alia that section 4a CC according to the opinion of the appellate court, relates to a general regulation which inter alia meets the requirements of recognizability. Those have not – as has been considered – been met.
30.	The above leads the appellate court to the following conclusion.
31.	The above must result in declaring the prosecutor’s office barred from prosecution of the suspect in the matter of genocide.
Declares the prosecutor’s office barred from prosecution of the suspect for count 1 on the summons with case number 09/750007-07.