In the "Written Observations" of August 6, filed at Hamburg in support of the claimed proclaimed guilt of the two accused, the Republic of India has led, as supporting documents, only those created by the investigators of Kerala and collected in the list described in the Charge Sheet that is dated may 2012.
The Charge Sheet already invokes the recourse to the SUA Act law, given the clear inconsistency of the evidence and therefore the inability to:
- to be deposited in Court
- as a result make them unavailable to the defense
- transmit them to the Italian judiciary had requested.
But to be able to apply SUA Act to the court proceedings, the elements referred to in Sec. 3 (see Analysis of Annex 3 - SUA Act) are missing.
These items have been created with the "testimonies" made by Vitelli, Gupta and Samson in may 2013 and by Kinserian, Freddy and Michael in August 2015.
This totally exclude the "scientific evidences" (if anything remains, is as tinsel for the media and public opinion), and the judicial process returns to rely solely on "evidence" like the good old days of the witch hunt, when the hapless herself had to show that she didn't go to the Infernal Sabbath flying on a broom.
Essentially Indian investigators handle the matter in their own use from the day following the facts, when they brought a fake trawler St.Antony under the guard of the Enrica Lexie. Up to the "declarations-copy" of Annex 46 useful to the application of SUA Act.
And as international agreements on the Law of the Sea are clear and would give jurisdiction to Italy, you try to deal the story as episode of common crime, the Italian military, in essence, shoot for fun, and that way it no longer matters law of the Sea.
Hence the rush to produce the affidavits (Annex 46) and the guilt rant filed August 6.
All this has nothing to do with the "State of Law", the Hamburg District Court and now the Hague Tribunal had to rule only on the jurisdiction but it was India itself to lead in this international forum the innocence - guilt topic with the written document filed on August 6.
And so now "grudgingly" the Hague Tribunal cannot avoid evaluating the story as a whole because:
- A possible assignment to India's jurisdiction,
- The consequent India's determination to treat the accused as common criminals,
- The consequent application of the SUA Act Law in order to get a conviction that would be impossible in a state of law...
...would disqualify for ever the International Tribunal.
---September 1, 2018
- Luigi Di Stefano, Court Expert
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