A political tool? The politics of case selection at the special court for Sierra Leone

The establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) and a war crimes court (the Special Court for Sierra Leone or SCSL) in Sierra Leone has been described as a transitional justice (TJ) model that advances both justice and reconciliation.2 Whether these institutions have been a ‘success’ has been highly contested within Sierra Leone and among external TJ observers. This chapter focuses on the politics informing the most prominent process in Sierra Leone: the Special Court.3 The chapter claims that the independence or otherwise of SCSL case selection is a key indicator of success. It considers the interests of the actors who designed the Court and traces the manifestation of those interests in key elements of institutional design and function. Its findings support a more realist explanation of the Court’s creation and function than the normative aspirations espoused by the Court and repeated by other observers ‘that no one was beyond the court’s reach’.4 I argue that the politics of the Court’s creation compromised its capacity to independently pursue its mandate — to pursue those most responsible for crimes. This was a Court, I argue, designed to assist other US and British instruments of regime change strategy in Liberia and regime protection in Sierra Leone.