In my letter to these columns on May 29, I criticised the UN for being a toothless tiger on East Timor and in all other theatres where human rights have been blatantly violated.
Therefore, I was not surprised to hear a report on Radio Australia on July 5, on the imminent failure of the UN-backed justice system in East Timor, to bring anyone of note to trial, because of manpower and money problems.
The UN is concerned that defence lawyers are very inexperienced and not up to the task of confronting prosecutors who gained experience prosecuting at the war crimes trials in the Hague.
I do not understand this. Inexperienced lawyers would surely mean the UN would be more likely to succeed in gaining a conviction. Why does it then use this as a reason to allow cases to collapse? When has a prosecutor ever said to a judge that because a defence lawyer is not good enough they should let the criminal go free?
If they are really concerned about a fair trial for these criminals why do they not provide better lawyers for the defence, whatever it costs? The head of the monitoring bureau in East Timor, as well as some international judges, have grave concerns, as do most people in the know, that funding will run out well before all the cases are heard.
Also, the system does not allow evidence from trials of less important people to be used in the trials of the very big fish such as the previous governor Abilio Soares, the previous army commander, and the previous police chief. Therefore, they will be set free. Why does the UN keep allowing despots to get away with crimes against humanity for reasons of money and political correctness? This is yet another situation where there will be no justice in another killing field where the UN turned up late.