The difficult job of witness protection

‘Witness protection’ is where governments relocate and provide new identities to a witness and their family in exchange for testimony.

It’s done because the prosecutors believe that without being protected, the witness would be at severe risk of intimidation or even death at the hands of those being prosecuted.

But the process has many flaws, both in the rich and poor world.

Witness protection in America

Witnesses are commonly high level members of criminal organisations who have decided to provide information about their colleagues in order to avoid prosecution.

They have often committed serious crimes themselves like robbery and murder, and therefore pose a real threat to the unsuspecting communities to which they are relocated.

Even The United States Marshall’s service – one of the most advanced witness protection programs in the world – has had numerous problems.

For instance, witnesses have re-engaged in crime, utilised their new identity to avoid previous debts and prevented those with legal access to see their children.

The bottom line is there is no easy fix to these problems. The hunger of prosecutors to secure convictions of high level criminals often outweighs the public’s interest in ensuring criminals admitted into witness protection do not reoffend.

However, steps are being taken to improve the system.

A compensation programme for victims of protected witnesses has been put in place along with better monitoring of witnesses and a compulsory evaluation of their debts before admission.

Witness protection at international criminal tribunals

Whilst it’s still enormously helpful in normal life, protection of witnesses in war crimes trials is absolutely critical.

The most serious crimes known to man occur in parts of the world where insecurity is rife, witnesses can be easily targeted, and little government money is available for protection.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established in the same year as the Rwandan genocide, yet no witness protection programme was put in place.

In the court’s first two years, 99 witnesses were killed according to an internal UN report.

But providing witness protection to people who live in situations of poverty and insecurity presents its own ethical problems for governments and war crimes tribunals.

Witnesses in war crimes trials are often either criminal insiders as described above, or crime scene witnesses.

And where war crimes are being prosecuted – most commonly in Africa – witnesses can have a lot to gain from witness protection.

Having you and your family relocated away from a life of poverty and conflict is quite an incentive to participate as a witness in a trial.

Therefore, in situations of conflict, whether a witness’ testimony can be trusted as authentic is a very serious question.

If it isn’t found to be authentic, this brings the legitimacy of these war crimes tribunals into question, particularly when decisions to admit witnesses are biased.

Furthermore, other forms of evidence such as forensic evidence are rarely available in war crimes trials, unlike trials in most wealthy countries.

This unfortunately makes witness testimonies even more important. Indeed, at a war crimes trial a conviction often hangs on the testimony of witnesses.

The problems with deciding who gets protection

In the case of the Rwandan and Sierra Leonean war crimes courts, investigators and protection personnel only need to understand the crimes committed in those countries.

However, protection personnel from the International Criminal Court (ICC) have to assess the threat to witnesses in multiple conflicts, across multiple countries.

Requiring staff to have an intimate understanding of security risks in multiple countries increases the chances of getting decisions wrong and mistakes being made.

This can lead to supposedly ‘safe’ people getting intimidated or killed, while at the other end of the scale protected witnesses could provide inaccurate testimony.

Additionally, war crimes tribunals rely on cooperation from countries, and this presents many problems, especially when some governments feel the prosecutions aren’t in their interests.

For instance, when the Rwandan tribunal began investigating crimes committed by the Rwandan government, the government banned witnesses from going to the tribunal until the chief prosecutor was replaced.

The Rwandan and Sierra Leonean tribunals also have the problem of who will be in charge of protecting witnesses once the prosecutions are over.

Sierra Leone’s tribunal has proposed the Sierra Leonean government take charge. However, when friends of the defendants come to power and decide to seek revenge, they could easily find their enemy witnesses.

For these reasons, witnesses who have testified to seek justice for the worst crimes may be hung out to dry like the victims before them.

If tribunals intend to stand as legitimate beacons of justice for the world, they need to confront these witness issues, because the deterrent to committing terrible crimes often relies on it.

By The Casual Truth