TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS

Southland Times, Issue 25747, 10 August 1945, Page 5

TRIALS OF WAR CRIMINALS

International Body Set Up

(Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, August 9. An agreement establishing an international tribunal for the trial of war criminals from the European zone whose offences have no particular geographical location has been signed by representatives of Britain, America, Russia and France. The tribunal consists of four representatives of those countries sitting permanently in Berlin. The first trial will be held at Nuremberg and subsequent trials at places which the tribunal decides. Each signatory will appoint a prosecutor. The procedure to be adopted will ensure fair trials, which will be confined to the expeditious hearing of issues raised by the charges. Strict measures will be taken to prevent action causing unreasonable delay in the proceedings. They follow largely the lines of British criminal court procedure, but the tribunal is not bound by the technical rules of evidence.

Article 19 of the charter accompanying the agreement declares that the tribunal shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious, non-technical procedure. The tribunal will try criminals whether they are accused individually or as members of organizations or groups, or in both capacities. The signatories will make available for trials major war criminals detained by them and do their best to make available such war criminals as are not in a signatory’s_territory. The agreement does not prejudice the Moscow Declaration of 1943 concerning the return of war criminals to the countries where they committed the crimes. It comes into force today and operates for a year, continuing thereafter subject to a month’s notice from any signatory. The decisions will be by a majority vote, and where the votes are evenly divided, the president’s vote shall be decisive. The tribunal charter lists the large number of acts within the tribunal’s jurisdiction under three headings—crimes against the peace, violations of laws and customs and war crimes against humanity. Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices in a common plan or conspiracy are held responsible for acts committed by others. Heads of states are responsible and officials are not freed from responsibility by the fact that they acted under orders from a Government or from superiors.

MILITARY COURTS’ POWERS National military courts are empowered to try members of groups or organizations declared to be criminal by the international tribunal. An accused person, if he cannot be found, can be tried in his absence. The tribunal is empowered to take judicial notice of Governmental documents, United Nations’ reports and the findings of national tribunals. All documents are to be in English, French and Russian and defendant’s language. The tribunal is empowered to impose the death sentence and confiscate stolen property. Its expenses are to be borne from the funds allotted for the maintenance of the Control Council in Germany. Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief United States representative on the War Crimes Commission, in a statement on the war criminals’ tribunal pointed out that four nations with different legal systems had tried to knit ideas of just criminal proceedings into a co-operative trial. Much of that to which American lawyers had been accustomed would be missing. He had not seen fit to insist that the prisoners should benefit from all the protections which the American legal system gave defendants. “Our system seems unduly tender to Russian and French jurists,” he said. “Their systems seem summary to us, but the Germans themselves employed and understand the Continental system... It is not inappropriate that a special military commission for the trials of men for crimes committed in Europe should follow rather largely European procedures. The essentials of a fair trial have been assured.”

Justice Jackson regretted the necessity to use four languages, which would involve a delay. He said: “This will be a dreary business; there is no use trying to dodge the fact, but I don’t think the world will be poorer if it takes a month or two to try men whose capacity for harm has already been overcome.”