The case for the defence "The whole trial for something like murder can be over in 45 minutes," says British barrister Noel Casey, who has just returned from Kabul. "What was most noticeable was how informal it was. People would drift in and out of the room and it didn't have any of the gravity that you normally associate with a trial. It was like sitting in a lounge." The football stadium in Kabul may no longer be used for public executions but someone accused of murder can still be tried and sentenced in less than an hour, with no legal representation. Now a group of western lawyers, including British barristers, are hoping to change the nature of Afghan justice with a pioneering system of legal aid for defendants. The project, Legal Aid Afghanistan (LAA), has been organised by the International Legal Foundation (ILF), a New York-based group, which had its first experience of trying to create a legal aid system in a post war environment in Rwanda in 1997. Now they are hoping to help the Afghan criminal justice system codify its existing laws and introduce legal aid defenders throughout the system. Casey, a criminal law barrister with chambers in Red Lion Court in London, was one of a team of ILF lawyers from the west acting as mentors and advisers to a team of nine Afghan lawyers. "It has to be seen as part of a wider project trying to establish a functioning criminal justice system," says Casey who, before he was called to the bar, had jobs in commerce, teaching and music journalism in France, Italy and Britain. "The project sees itself as trying to re-establish the rule of law." The organisation has already found itself defending three Americans in what would be a bizarre case in any country: two former US servicemen and a New York cameraman accused of kidnapping and violently interrogating eight Afghans in a bid to discover the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. The trio, Jack Idema, Brent Bennett and cameraman Eddie Caraballo, were arrested last July and jailed for between six and eight years after a brief trial. Their lawyers, who included two LAA attorneys, argued that they had not been able to present their cases properly, an argument that will form the basis of their forthcoming appeal. Idema, a volatile character with a fraud conviction in the US who dresses in military gear and dark glasses, claimed he was acting with the authority of the Pentagon and angrily presented his case to the media. American officials have distanced themselves from him and have made it clear that they have no intention of intervening in the Afghan justice system. The three men are anxious to get out of jail as soon as possible. Last December, there was a shoot-out at the Pul-e-Charkhi jail where they are being held in which four inmates and four guards were killed. The three Americans believe they were targets. Cases involving locals are not quite so spectacular. One defendant had asked a driver to deliver 15 bags of peas to an address in Kabul but the driver suspected that one bag contained opium and reported it to the police. Another, who was accused of gambling after being found with three sets of dice and two packs of cards during a police raid, claimed he just happened to be in the house by chance. A third was accused of kidnapping boys from a bus stop and taking them over the border into Peshawar in Pakistan. "Property disputes are often the cause of violence," says Casey. One of his cases, an attempted murder, resulted from a row over land. He also helped with the defence of a man who shot his wife with a Kalashnikov, and claimed that he had pulled the trigger by mistake. Legal Aid Afghanistan has its origins in Peshawar back in 2000. The idea was to work with the many Afghan refugees living there so they could adapt their criminal justice system to international standards when they eventually returned home. For many, the return came sooner than expected with the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001. Now the aim is two-fold: to codify the existing legal system and to introduce the concept of defence lawyers into the criminal justice system. The project is funded mainly by the billionaire George Soros's Open Society Institute with assistance from the Canadian and German governments and the US Agency for International Development, USAID. Under the scheme, western lawyers visit for two months at a time, working free of charge, with their accommodation paid for by the foundation.
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