Ad hoc tribunal start in October?

Ad hoc tribunal start in October?

JAKARTA (JP): The chief of the justices team preparing the
establishment of an ad hoc human rights tribunal, Benjamin
Mangkoedilaga, expects that they could start the court hearings
in October this year.

Correcting his previous announcement that the trials would
start in September, Benjamin said on Wednesday they would only
open the trials in October "because the team had yet to finish
recruitment of noncareer judges."

The government has revised the decree on ad hoc tribunals to
try human rights violations in East Timor in April and September
of 1999 and the rights abuses that occurred during the Tanjung
Priok shootings in September 1984.

"If you ask when we can start to try the cases, I would say
that we could start them tomorrow. But trying such cases needs
further requirements if we really want to properly handle the
cases," Benjamin told The Jakarta Post at his office.

He said such requirements included the objective recruitment
of noncareer judges who would be selected from among experts and
professionals dealing with legal matters.

He said further that between 60 and 80 noncareer and career
judges were needed to run the ad hoc tribunals. "But so far, the
team has succeeded only in recruiting 40 career judges and no
noncareer judges," he said, adding that they found it hard to
recruit noncareer judges.

Ideally, he said, each human rights violation case would be
tried by five judges comprising two career-judges and three
noncareer judges.

So far, the Attorney General's Office has prepared 12 dossiers
on 18 suspects involved in four incidents of alleged rights
abuses that occurred before and after the East Timor self-
determination ballot on Aug. 30, 1999. The office is still
working on the investigation of the Tanjung Priok incident. (tso)