Chapter 7 • The Right to a Fair Trial: Part II – From Trial to Final Judgement 1. Introduction This chapter, which is a logical continuation of Chapter 6, which dealt with some of the fundamental human rights that must be guaranteed at the stage of criminal investigations, will be devoted to the international legal rules that apply to the trial stage. It will also deal with some important related issues, such as the limits on punishment, the right to appeal, the right to compensation in the event of miscarriage of justice, and the question of fair trial and special tribunals. A brief reference will also be made to the right to a fair trial in public emergencies, a subject that will be considered in further depth in Chapter 16. What is important to bear in mind throughout this chapter, however, are the two fundamental rules that were dealt with in Chapter 6, namely, the right to equality before the law and the right to presumption of innocence, which also condition the trial proceedings from their beginning to the delivery of the final judgement. Lastly, some issues considered in Chapter 6 will again surface in the present chapter, owing to the fact that the pre-trial and trial stages are intrinsically linked. However, overlapping has been kept to a strict minimum. 2. The Legal Provisions The major legal provisions on fair trial are to be found in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 7 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, article 8 of the American Convention on Human Rights and article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The relevant provisions of these articles will be dealt with below under the appropriate headings. Additional rules to which reference will be made below are, among others, the Guidelines on the Role of Prosecutors, the Basic Principles of the Role of Lawyers and the Statutes of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. 3. Human Rights during Trial 3.1 The right to be tried by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law The right to be tried by an independent and impartial tribunal must be applied at all times and is a right contained in article 14(1) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which provides that “in the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers 253