Kalistan

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Kalistani War Crimes Trials begin
Prosecutors find Guerra Guilty of 15 Counts of Accessory, as second round of indictments made
Kaliburg, Grand Duchy of Ananto
February 1, 5626


General Martin Guerra affirms that he is telling truth before the Special Judiciary Panel

The Justice Ministry has formally convened a Special Judiciary Panel to try allegations resulting from the investigation of the Independent Truth Commission.  More than three dozen officers and 350 enlisted servicemen and women have been formally charged of a wide array of crimes, and 203 individuals have already plead guilty of the crimes and have agreed to cooperate with the Court in exchange for a lesser sentence.

The first person on the docket after convening the Court was General Martin Guerra, who was the Kalistani Overall operational commander during the war.  Though Guerra was under Lodamese command during the conflict, he was charged with dereliction of duty, failure to report more than 1000 individual crimes which he knew of, and as a direct accessory to another 4,382 individual crimes which took place under his command.  General Guerra plead not guilty to all of the charges, and the Court ordered a recess to prepare for the trial.

The trial is a special trial held by a new constituted three judge panel:  One Justice, the Honorable Connie Hernandez, is the Representative of the Ministry of Justice, and therefore represents the interests of the State.  The Second Justice, Lt. General Christopher Morrison is a senior member of the Judge Advocates General Corps in the Regular Military, and represents the interests of the Regular Military.  And the Third Justice, the Honoralble Carina Hernandez-Vasquez, is a long time Civil Rights Attorney from Sulari, and represents the Human Rights Community.  This panel was selected by the Justice Ministry and will serve as the Jury of the trial.  The variety of backgrounds on the Court are designed to ensure that all aspects of the law are taken into account when making decisions, and all decisions on all charges must be agreed upon unanimously.

The first witnesses to take the stand were both from Liktaonia. Katherine Donnelly, from Delores and Jared Whitehall from St. Jackson both gave compelling and heartrending testimonies of Kalistani reprisals in their respective towns.  Donnelly spoke of seeing civilians rounded up by foreign soldiers and treated roughly as they were thrown into the back of vehicles and taken out of town: "We were the lucky ones, until we weren't, Kalistan destroyed the only city we have ever known, almost everyone in Likatonia knows someone who died fighting on the frontline, thousands more still missing." She said she saw one Kalistani squad break into a house and she heard screams before the squad left the building and started it on fire. "We just hid the kids," said Donnelly.

Meanwhile, Whitehall testified as to the destruction of various vital infrastructure projects. Whitehall, a local engineer at the St. Jackson Water Treatment Plant, said that Kalistani soldiers broke into the facility, held his workers at gun point and deliberately destroyed the water filtration systems for the city, flooding the town's drinking supply with raw sewage that contained high levels of dangerous bacteria. This was part of a much longer program of deliberately destroying civilian infrastructure. ""Kalistan showed no mercy on us, it was collective punishment. In the Likatonian war every day felt like a lifetime, it never seemed to end. They carried out reprisals against the civilian population. At one point St. Jackson was left without any electricity, no water or heating."

The General sat silently as the testimony was given, and the General's lawyer asked few questions on counter examination. The testimony was followed by testimony of five former service members who had taken plea bargains from the state, all saying they had received orders from their chain of command to commit the depredations. The Contention of the Prosecution each time was that "The Chain of Command does not act independently. Those orders come from above. And if they do act independently, responsibility for those actions still rests with the chain of command."

Over the next four days, witnesses for the Prosecution made the case that the General not only knew about the acts, but also condoned them. The most damaging testimony came from Guerra's Corp commander, Colonel Jacob Renner, who said he discussed the depredations with the General at length on several occasions, the two men joked about it, and on one occasion, within earshot of both the General's Executive Officer, as well as the Colonel's executive officer, the General was heard to say "Well, these people knew we were coming. Maybe they shouldn't be Likatonian." The General's Lawyer has denied that any such conversation ever took place.

In the end, the Defense Attorney only called one witness, Lt. General Martin Guerra, who took the stand. He was asked if he thought he would receive a fair trial in this court, and the General responded "The verdict of this court was reached long before we ever got here. Let's get it over with." He was asked if he ordered any troops to commit depredations, reprisals or crimes of any sort. He said "No Sir." He was asked if he knew of any depredations, he said "I would not call anything we did depredations. They were all within the proper conduct of war." He asked if he had ever misrepresented the activities of the units under his command to anyone, including the Emperor. He said "No Sir." And on Cross Examination, he denied any responsibility or knowledge of any of the alleged crimes, and stated, "The Prosecution wishes to paint the Highly Professional Kalistani Regular Force as an Unruly Mob. We were in Likatonia to do a job, and we did it. And then we went home. And that is the sum total of our activity in Likatonia." When he was asked who ordered him to do this job, he said "We receive our orders from the Commander in Chief of the Empire of Ananto and Kalistan." He was then asked if the Emperor ordered him to commit depredations, and he said "No Sir."

Following his testimony, the General was dismissed, and the court was put into recess. The panel determined that there was enough evidence to find the general guilty of most of the charges he was facing, however, compelling and irrefutable evidence had been provided in only 15 of the hundreds of counts leveled against him. He was found guilty of Accessory to Criminal Acts in the cases of destruction of public property and civilian Infrastructure, six counts of Accessory to the Criminal Acts of Extrajudicial Killing, and 8 Counts of Accessory to the Torture of POWs. Each charge carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment on King's Island Penal Colony. He was ultimately sentences to six life sentences to be served concurrently.

The Court then began hearing panel charges against Guerra's Officers. Guerra's conviction immediately served as precedent in the trials. That trial proceeds apace, while the court has also issued more than 300 additional indictments of officers and individuals.

The Trials will continue until all the charges are heard and tried. The speed of Guerra's Conviction was meant to clear the court of the highest profile case, so that lower charges could be tried more thoroughly. As the court is a special court that closely follows a normal courts martial proceeding structure, both rules of evidence and rules of due process are different than one would find in a civil proceeding. "We opted to not use the Courts Martial system itself, because while all the men and women indicted were connected with the War in Likatonia, most of them are no longer in the Regular Force," said General Morrison. "But we can't try them under civil law either, because few of the things these individuals are charged with necessarily violate civil law, and it would be a real stretch to try to fit the existing law to their charges. Consequently, the Justice Ministry developed this Hybrid System to provide something of both worlds in trying these charges."

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