Geoffrey Robertson is right to attack the government's proposals to permit anonymous prosecution witnesses in criminal trials as "the most serious single assault on liberty in memory" (There can be no fair trials with this perjurer's charter, July 8). However, as a former president of the special court for Sierra Leone, he should know that the abusive use of anonymous witnesses has become the norm in those international criminal tribunals he otherwise supports.
At the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for instance, some 40% of the prosecution's witnesses are anonymous, ie they appear in court with their identity hidden from the public and the defence. This is in addition to the fact that much of their testimony is also given in secret - the transcripts are simply censored so that the public can never know what has been said in court. Numerous are the defendants who have been sent to prison on the basis of such evidence, or who have been subject to a pre-conviction sentence by being forced to stand trial for many years while such testimony is presented.
Robertson rightly
condemns these proposals for Britain because they violate the right of every
defendant to challenge his accusers. But international criminal justice is
based on the same tacit presumption of the defendant's guilt which has
inspired them. As a result, the procedures in international tribunals have
been a gross travesty of due process for years.
John Laughland,
Bath