Women

Polish LGBTQ+ rights activists who were prosecuted for depicting the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo on posters had their acquittal upheld by an appeals court following TrialWatch monitoring and TrialWatch Expert Professor Lisa Davis giving the trial a grade of “D”. One of the activists, Anna Prus, told the Clooney Foundation for Justice they all felt compelled to act in response to a display a church had put up for Easter which included a crucifix surrounded by wooden boxes with different sins written on them, including “LGBT” and “gender.”

Soon after TrialWatch issued a press statement calling for the release of Shafiqul Kajol, a 52-year-old Bangladeshi photographer and editor of an independent news outlet, he was freed. Kajol is charged under Bangladesh’s draconian cybercrime law, the Digital Security Act, in three separate cases. The cases all relate to a story he shared on his Facebook page alleging a sex scandal involving several high-ranking politicians from the ruling party.

TrialWatch is monitoring ongoing proceedings against Mr. Kajol.

Just days after the TrialWatch report was released on the trial of Dian Abdullah, a 65-year-old blogger who was tried for ‘offensive communication’ for criticizing the government and the monarchy’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic, the prosecution offered to settle the case for a fine.

TrialWatch has since leveraged the monitoring and reporting in Abdullah’s case to file an amicus submission in an affirmative challenge to the law under which she was convicted.

Evelyn Hernandez was prosecuted for aggravated homicide based on an obstetric emergency she suffered while giving birth. TrialWatch monitored her case, and she was ultimately acquitted. CFJ did not stop there and intervened in support of Salvadorian women more broadly in a landmark case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights challenging El Salvador’s prosecution of women who have undergone obstetric emergencies.

The Court ordered $200,000 in compensation for the victim’s family, legal reforms to women’s healthcare, for women seeking treatment at hospitals, and training on gender bias for people working in the justice sector to prevent such abuses in the future.

A vocal critic of Rwanda’s ruling party, Paul Rusesabagina, was convicted of terrorism-related activities for his alleged role in attacks perpetrated by the National Liberation Front (FLN) following a sham trial.

In March 2023, two and a half years after he was arrested in Rwanda, Rusesabagina’s 25-year prison sentence was commuted and he was freed. Our monitoring and reporting were key to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s finding that Rusesabagina was being arbitrarily detained. Our findings were also used in pivotal calls for his release by both the EU and the US authorities.

The most recent of the three TrialWatch reports produced on the trial of Rusesabagina described it as “seriously flawed” and as having “violated international and regional standards for fair trial procedures”. TrialWatch Expert Geoffrey Robertson KC said that the court “accepted and promoted the government’s case … without question or challenge.”

CFJ participated in a landmark case before the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights to challenge Tanzania’s policy of expelling and banning married and pregnant girls from school.  This policy impacts more than 1 in 4 Tanzanian girls who are either pregnant or married before the age of 18. After the case was initiated the government announced a reversal of this discriminatory policy in a major U-turn that will benefit a quarter of the population of adolescent girls in the country.

Ugandan women’s rights activist Dr. Stella Nyanzi’s conviction was overturned on the basis of violations identified by a TrialWatch report submitted to a Ugandan appeals court.

Dr. Nyanzi was prosecuted for posting a poem critical of the Ugandan President on Facebook in a trial which TrialWatch monitored and graded a “D”.

Paola Ugaz is an investigative journalist in Peru who has written about corruption, drug trafficking, and terrorism and, most recently, allegations of paedophilia in a Catholic organization called Sodalicio. People linked to Sodalicio submitted multiple complaints against her, including a criminal defamation complaint filed by the director of a Catholic news website. TrialWatch was not allowed in the courtroom but monitored the case using audio recordings and court documents.

After issuing a report finding that Ms. Ugaz’s trial violated her right to freedom of expression, TrialWatch called for the case against her to be dismissed and in January 2022 she was acquitted.

TrialWatch monitored the trial of Moroccan journalist Hajar Raissouni and released a report exposing her sham trial. She was then freed & pardoned following the international attention drawn to her case. TrialWatch Expert Baroness Helena Kennedy KC – Director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute – graded the trial a “D” and our findings on the case were picked up by, for example, the New York Times.

Ms. Raissouni – a journalist for one of Morocco’s few independent newspapers – was charged with the ‘crimes’ of abortion and extra-marital sex after reporting criticism of the government & convicted after a sham process in which she was denied access to a lawyer.