ROUND TABLE ON (INTERNATIONAL) CRIMINAL JUSTICE DURING THE COVID 19 CRISIS AND SCREENING OF THE FILM ‘THE BALKAN TRIANGLE’
‘OTHERMOVIE ONLINE’ – WED 27TH MAY 2020, 2030 CET
English | Italiano
· Editor
and moderator: Attorney Roberta Arnold, PhD, former Public
Prosecutor and lecturer at the Universities of Lucerne and Zurich, visiting
scholar at Franklin University, Lugano – short bio.
· Introduction: Roberto
Badaracco, Attorney, Head of Lugano’s Cultural Council (CH) – short bio.
Artistic direction: Drago
Stevanovic, Director of OtherMovie Lugano Film festival
Guests:
· David Young, Barrister, Red Lion Chambers, London (UK)
– short bio.
· Ximena
Vengoechea, Advocate, Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh (UK) – short bio.
·Alice
Zago, Trial Lawyer, International Criminal Court, The Hague (NL)
– short bio.
ROUND TABLE
How is criminal law coping
with the COVID19 crisis? What are the repercussions on the actors of criminal
law proceedings? Are domestic and international judicial systems facing the
same difficulties? Important trials have had to be postponed following to the
state of ‘necessity’ or ‘emergency’ in many jurisdictions. Just to mention some
examples:
· In Switzerland,
the long-awaited war crimes trial against the former leader of the United
Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) Alieuh Kosiah for events
that occurred in Liberia between 1989 and 1996 had to be postponed from April
to June-July. Kosiah has been held in pre-trial detention since November 2014.
·In The
Netherlands, the Appeal Hearing of former Bosnian Serb military leader, 78
years old Ratko Mladic, has been rescheduled from March to June due to a
surgery. However, the new date could be subject to change following to the
restrictions introduced in the NL to control the pandemic. Mladic was sentenced
to life imprisonment on 22.11. 2017 by the ICTY for genocide, war crimes and
crimes against humanity, for the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica (BiH).
In Italy, a
letter sent by the Department of Prison Administration to the directors of the
penitentiary institutions on 21 March 2020 created a lot of turmoil. Said
letter required the listing and notification of the names of the detainees
affected by pathologies and health risks associated with COVID 19. Following
this, various detainees were released, including some of those that were
subject to the special ‘Article 41 bis’ regime, applicable to those convicted
of mafia-related crimes.
Our guests,
who work in different judicial systems, on the Continent and across the
Channel, will report about their experience at international and domestic
level.
FILM SCREENING: ‘THE BALKAN
TRIANGLE’
Media play a fundamental role in
connecting and informing people in times of isolation and crisis, like wars and
pandemics. They can also become promotors of justice, peace and stability. This
will be discussed with Stef Brok (short bio), director of ‘The Balkan
Triangle’, a film portraying three men who used media to battle nationalism
during and after the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. Often putting their lives at
risk, they tried to build bridges between the conflicted groups of former
Yugoslavia.
