Witness Interference in Cases before the International Criminal Court

Witness interference―also known as “witness tampering” in certain legal systems―is the act of perverting, or attempting to pervert, the course of justice by altering the content of a witness’ testimony and/or preventing them from testifying.

This summary of a survey of publicly available information by the Open Society Justice Initiative suggests that witness interference has been alleged in nearly every case before the ICC. 

This paper argues that the inability to adequately protect witnesses affects the court’s credibility as an institution, and is one of the most urgent challenges facing the court and international criminal justice.