Invoking command responsibility without proof unjust--expert

By Robert Gonzaga

Central Luzon Desk

First Posted 14:36:00 06/17/2008

SUBIC BAY FREEPORT -- The idea of command responsibility "without proof of direct link" in the prosecution of cases involving extrajudicial killings is unjust, a top prosecutor in the genocide trials in Cambodia has said.
"It's easier to prosecute someone with blood on [his] hands than the person who ordered, or perhaps more relevant to the context, the person who let it happen, or was in a position to create a climate that either incited, encouraged or empowered the person who actually committed the crime," said Robert Petit, the international co-prosecutor from the United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT).
"You have to prove that the person is specifically responsible in some way. Just holding a [military] general responsible for the action of subordinates if he had no way of knowing is just undermining the system," Petit told the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Monday.
Petit addressed prosecutors, lawyers, and human rights workers in a conference on the prosecution of crimes against international human rights and international humanitarian law.
The conference is a complement to the two-day Seminar Workshop on Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances by the Philippine Judicial Academy (Philja) and the Commission on Human Rights which opened Monday at the Vista Marina Hotel here.
Petit, according to his bio-data, is co-prosecutor in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, an internationalized tribunal set up with the help of the United Nations to try perpetrators of war crimes during the reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.