On this day in ...... 1979 (30 years ago today), after months of civil protest, Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and his wife, Empress Farah, fled, heading by plane from Tehran to Aswan, Egypt. Pahlavi, whose lavish lifestyle's evident in this 1967 photo of the couple's coronation (credit), would die in the latter country the following year -- even as the austere Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini consolidated power in Iran.
... 2002, at Freetown, Sierra Leone's Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Solomon E. Berewa, and the United Nations' Under Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, Hans Corell, signed the Agreement on the Establishment of a Special Court for Sierra Leone, thus paving the way to adjudicated charges against
persons who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed in the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996.
IntLawGrrls' prior posts respecting this hybrid tribunal are here; among my publications on same is this article. The Special Court's website details its accomplishments to date: it reports that 2 cases (Civil Defence Forces and Armed Forces Revolutionary Council) "have been completed, including appeals," at the courthouse in Freetown. As for the Revolutionary United Front case, also tried in Freetown, "[t]estimony ... is complete, and a Trial Judgement is expected later this year." Finally, "[t]he trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor is in the Prosecution phase at The Hague." The court also
considered some other matters, and it withdrew 3 indictments on account of the deaths of the defendants, Foday Sankoh, Sam Bockarie, and Johnny Paul Koroma.
