Atrocity Trials and Ageism


 

Criminal law that prosecutes atrocity crimes is more likely than others to be in the business of prosecuting aged defendants. 

Atrocity trials are more likely to prosecute individuals for crimes they had committed years, possibly decades, prior to the opening of the trial.

Examples include:

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia (ECCC) opened decades after the crimes were committed. The ECCC found political support nearly twenty years after the end of the atrocities for which the court was established and still needed another ten years to be realized. During the intervening time, those suspected of perpetrating atrocities lived, worked, and aged. The individuals brought before the court ranged in age from 65 to 82 when they were first arrested or transferred to the court in 2007.

77-year-old Laurent Bucyibaruta was prosecuted in France and 87-year-old Félicien Kabuga was prosecuted at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) in the Hague for their suspected contributions to the 1994 Rwandan genocide; both trials began in 2022.

Also in 2022, two suspected Nazi war criminals were tried and convicted before German courts: Irmgard Furchner, 96, secretary to the Stutthof concentration camp commandant, and Josef Schuetz, 101, a former SS guard at Sachsenhausen.

Drawing from philosophical literature on respect for persons and the morality of aged-based differential treatment, this project explores the expressive value of prosecutorial discretion regarding older individuals. 

Presentions of this research have been made at the following venues:

  • The Expressive Value of Prosecuting Aged Defendants: A Rebuke of Ageism. The Visualities and Aesthetics of Prosecuting Aged Defendants, funded workshop, to be held in April 2020, but postponed due to global pandemic, University of Goeningen, the Netherlands, held via zoom in Feb 2021.
  • PPSA – panel presentation: Ethics of Prosecuting Aged Defendants of Atrocity Crimes, Sept 17, 2023.
  • Exeter University. “International Criminal Trials as a lens through which to view aging”. Oct 18-22, 2023. 

Publications:

Fisher, K.J. (2022). The Expressive Value of Prosecuting Aged Defendants: A Rebuke of Ageism. International Criminal Law Review. 22(1-2): 63-85.

(forthcoming) Book chapter: “Atrocity Prosecutions, Cultural Representation, and the Invisible Older Individual” Accepted for publication in edited volume, Mark Drumbl and Caroline Fournet.