A New Model Of International Criminal Trial - A Mixed Court

In response to the question of the failure to abide by international law and of theissue of impunity, while prosecuting war crime, crime against humanity, genocide andother crimes of similar nature, the international community has continued developingnew trial mode adapting to the judicial systems of different countries. The existingpractices, including the Nuremberg Trials, the Tokyo Trials, the practice of ICTY andICTR, as well as the establishment of International Criminal Court, are constantlypromoting the realization of the supreme goal of international law—the peace and dignityof human beings, which relate closely to the welfare and justice of the world.Hybrid court can be regarded as a new development in the path of the realization oftransitional justice. As an institution designed to investigate, prosecute and try a series ofcrimes occurred during a certain period within a specific country, it was established bythe combined effort of the international community and the country where the crime wascommitted and was comprised of internationally recognized prosecutors and judges andjudicial staff within a certain country. Mainly based on the treaty signed by the UnitedNations and the country where the crime was committed, it has been widely adopted byvarious countries since its occurrence and has shown diverse forms in the practice due toits advantages such as the close relation with the country where the crime was committed,the promotion of the development of the local justice and its flexibility.Nowadays, international tribunals are exiting the historical stage with theestablishment of the residual mechanism of the ICTY and ICTR, while the ICC is deemedto be incapable of assuming the responsibility of prosecuting all the crimes of gravenature alone due to the fact that it took ten year for it to make its first judgment.Consequently, it is meaningful for us to discuss if hybrid court can be considered as thebest way to achieve transitional justice, to explore the gap between it theory and practiceand the challenges in front of each specific tribunal.In this article, the national court in the sense of general criminal procedure and the hybrid court will be clarified theoretically at first. Thus I will explore theevidence-collecting procedure, the trial proceeding and the implementation mechanism ofthe hybrid courts and thus compare them with the relevant mechanisms of ICC, ad hocinternational tribunals and Gacaca courts, in order to show the characteristics of hybridcourts in this regard.Then I will mainly discuss three typical hybrid tribunals: the Special Court for SierraLeone, The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and the Special Tribunalfor Lebanon and analyze their challenges facing in the practice. In conclusion, despite thefact that they are not perfect, I will argue that such courts should not only be consideredas an important complement to both international and domestic courts, but also as themost promising and flexible mechanism to address the future atrocities.