Humanity and Its Beneficiaries: Footing and Stance-Taking in an International Criminal Trial

Abstract

This article elucidates the role of metapragmatic devices like footing and stance-taking in trial hearings before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. It focuses on the case of Ahmad al Faqi al Mahdi, a Malian Islamist found guilty of the 2012 destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu. We examine how the prosecution and defense reflexively formulate the hearing as part of a wider text trajectory and how they align personae across participation frameworks by locating the current courtroom event into a wider dialogical field. A careful inspection of these metapragmatic devices reveals how trial participants navigate the multiple tensions facing this emergent, amalgamated form of criminal adjudication, which lacks a coercive apparatus of its own and still bears the traces of the political act of its institution.

One confession, multiple chronotopes: The interdiscursive authentication of an apology in an international criminal trial

“…This paper has focused on how the defense team's projection of a confessional chronotope invited the court to take a fresh look at al‐Mahdi's apology. In what follows, their authentication efforts are tackled from a slightly different perspective, with an eye on how the two counsels, and ICC trial actors in general, navigate the emergent character of this globalized form of criminal adjudication, and the various fissures and frictions this entails (D’hondt, 2019).…”

“…Next, al‐Mahdi moves on to the actual apology, directing it to the same three victim constituencies that the Prosecutor identified 6 months earlier at the confirmation of charges hearing (D’hondt, 2019): the Timbuktu community, the Malian nation, and Humanity at large (lines 14–17 below). He singles out the descendants of the saints whose tombs were destroyed (the only victim constituency actually participating in the trial) as privileged recipients (lines 18–19), and then formulates the apology as part of a reconciliatory dialogue by specifying the response he expects from these descendants and from the Timbuktu community (line 23 onwards).…”

“…A formal arrest warrant was issued on 18 September and 12 days later he appeared for the first time before an ICC judge in The Hague. The confirmation of charges hearing followed on 1 March 2016 (for an analysis, see Bens, 2018 and D’hondt, 2019). The trial itself started on August 22; the hearings were concluded in 3 days, and on 27 September al‐Mahdi was sentenced to 9 years in prison.…”

“…Opening up the black box of what goes on inside the courtroom makes tangible how trial actors in situ attend to the multiple challenges facing this emergent, amalgamated form of globalized criminal adjudication. Earlier work along these lines (D’hondt, 2019) focused on ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's attempt to demonstrate that the case met the gravity requirement, and the role that abstract notions of Humanity played in this process. Drawing on the ‘cultural heritage’ status of the demolished tombs, 7 Bensouda was able to expand the range of victim constituencies beyond the directly affected local community (which suffered because their lived relationship with the demolished monuments was severed), and managed to also speak on behalf of abstract constituencies like the Malian nation and the international community (who were bereaved of their ‘heritage’).…”

“…8 . One of the most striking features of this framework is that it bereaves victims of their political agency, illustrated by the Prosecutor's systematic recontextualization of victim statements as uttered by anonymous, faceless speakers, dependent on an outside actor to seek retribution on their behalf (D’hondt, 2019, pp. 441–444).…”