The Hearing

Today I went to watch my aunt while she was in court. Not on trial as a defendant or anything, but she is a lawyer. She is working on the first case to go before the United Nations International Criminal Court and this hearing today was the very first one before the Trial Chamber. The person on trial is Thomes Lubanga he is in trouble for recruiting kids to be soldiers. He is from the Congo in Africa.

When we got there, we weren't sure where to go, but our names were on a VIP reserved list as guests of my Aunt and so we had seats in the front row. There is glass in between the visitors gallery where we were and the actual Courtroom itself where my Aunt and all the participants were sitting. The glass is bullet proof to protect the people inside....its a lot different than the courtrooms I've seen on TV in the US, and a lot more modern with computers and technology all over the place. There are TV monitors in the gallery and because the trial happens in a lot of different languages, there are head sets for people to wear and there are interpretors in a booth to the side who translate what is happening in the Courtroom immediately into all the different languages. I didn't know how to work the head set so I didn't understand half of what was happening because it was in French but apparently if you put the Chanel up one it was all in English. My Aunt laughed at us later for not knowing that, but how was I supposed to know that, nobody told us how to use them.

It was still cool to watch my Aunt wear that big black robe...even though all she really did was sit there and talk to her friend...what a slacker. Then at the end I found out that Thomes Lubanga, the defendant was in there to but he looked like a lawyer to me till I found out it was him. My Bestemom had taken the paper that said what was happening that they gave us when we first went into the gallery. Supposedly it was an agenda for the hearing, but she didn't let me see it even though I was the one who got it. She put it away for safe keeping because she was excited to see my Aunt's first day of Court at the ICC. She has worked for other international tribunals like the Rwanda Tribunal but since this was the first hearing at the ICC, my Bestamom was excited.

The hearing didn't last too long and then we went back to my Aunt's house and waited for her to finish up at her work (she lives across the street from the Court...literally, you can see her office from her living room balcony), and to come home. She was mostly bummed out that the next hearing is scheduled for her birthday. It's a Monday and we were planning on taking a 3 day weekend and traveling in Europe for her birthday, but now she'll have to be at the Court on that day....bummer!