Special Court for Sierra Leone

Today the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone unanimously upheld the conviction of Charles Taylor, the former President of Liberia, and affirmed the Trial Chamber's sentence of 50 years imprisonment. The judgment is available here; a short press release here. The judgment is very long and will take some time to digest. Symbolically and politically it is of course of immense importance. Legally, however, the most interesting aspect of the judgment is the SCSL's refusal to follow the ICTY Appeals Chamber's holding in Perisic that the actus reus of aiding and abetting liability requires the assistance to be 'specifically directed' towards the commission of crimes. Readers will recall that Perisic was acquitted despite knowing that the aid he was providing to the Bosnian Serbs will help them in the commission of crimes against international law, since the ICTY Appeals Chamber found that the aid was given to the war effort as a whole, rather than to the commission of the crimes as such. For more background, see my previous post…