Aug 2, 2016- A British court on Monday acquitted Nepal Army Colonel Kumar Lama on one count, while the jury failed to arrive at consensus on the second count.
Col Lama, arrested in January 2013, has been on trial at the Old Bailey, for torturing two alleged Maoist rebels—Karam Hussein and Janak Raut—in 2005 when he was in-charge of the Gorusinghe barracks in Kapilvastu district. Lama has all along denied both counts of inflicting severe pain or suffering. The Old Bailey on Monday acquitted Lama on the case of Karam Hussein. Hearing on Janak Raut’s case has been postponed until first week of September.
A 12-member jury is supposed to reach a unanimous decision.
Lt Col Lama was serving with the United Nations peace keeping force in South Sudan when he was arrested while visiting his family in East Sussex in January 2013.
He was arrested under Section 134 (sub-section 1) of the Criminal Justice Act, a law that defines torture as a universal jurisdiction, and the prosecution is being brought in Britain because an obligation under the United Nations Convention Against Torture to bring suspects to justice wherever they are detained. Torture, like war crimes, is subject to universal jurisdiction, allowing those who allegedly committed crimes abroad to be tried in Britain.
Hussein and Raut were arrested during the decade-long Maoist insurgency on suspicion of assisting then Maoist rebels. Lama faces charges of subjecting the two victims to mistreatment during their detention at the barracks of which he was the in charge in 2005.
Lama’s case has been dragging on for the last three years, with on one occasion in March last year the court adjourning the trial for the lack of a qualified interpreter for the Old Bailey hearing.
After Lama’s acquittal on one count on Monday, advocate Satish Raj Mainali said, “It raises questions about the credibility of Nepal’s human rights organisations when it comes to documenting incidents of rights violation. It also shows that issue of universal jurisdiction is not a cake walk.”
Govinda Bandi, another rights lawyer, though expressed happiness over Lama’s acquittal, argued that the case has established the fact that universal jurisdiction can be invoked to seek justice even in foreign land.
“It is not a matter of winning or losing the case,” Bandi said. “The lesson from this case is Nepal must strengthen its own system so that no Nepali national is tried on foreign soil.”
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