Some of the world’s top experts on war crimes gather today at the University of Iowa College of law, for a conference on war-crimes tribunals. Organizer Megan McMillen is a law student and editor of the "TransNational Law and Contemporary Problems Journal."
Panels will discuss "ad hoc" tribunals Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the prospects for quasi-international tribunals including a recent one that handled the tribunal of Saddam Hussein, and so-called hybrid international tribunals, that tackle issues in nations emerging from conflicts and work to encourage peace while they try to see that perpetrators of violence don’t escape justice.
A second panel will discuss the future of the international criminal courts, and a third will tackle alternatives to prosecution. Professor Adrien Wing at the University of Iowa College of Law will speak on the prospects for a "Truth and Reconciliation Commission" for Palestine, and Charles Allen, Deputy General Council for the Department of Defense in their National Affairs Division will speak on trying detainees at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan for war crimes.
The keynote speaker will be Iowa Food Prize Foundation President Kenneth Quinn, who spent most of his career working as an ambassador, diplomat and consultant. He’ll tell about serving as ambassador to Cambodia, including his role in capturing one of the Khmer Rouge generals and telling the State Department about atrocities committed by that guerrilla group in Cambodia. The conference goes on all day at the University of Iowa College of Law.