The Max Planck Foundation held a workshop with prosecutors from Tajikistan’s General Prosecutor’s Office concerning the use of battlefield evidence.
On 27 September 2024, Foundation staff hosted a workshop on the premises of the Office of the General Prosecutor of the Republic of Tajikistan entitled ‘Ensuring Accountability for Serious Violations of International Law and Terrorism-related Offences: Increasing the Use of Battlefield Evidence’.
The workshop featured two presentations by a Foundation research fellow on the use of battlefield evidence. The first session served to take stock of international legal standards and comparative practices and their reverberations in the Tajik context, such as normative standards applicable to the use of battlefield evidence; the concept of battlefield information and its significance in generating investigative leads; proactive information sharing with foreign authorities; and the legal standards pertaining to the introduction of battlefield information as evidence. This was followed by a lively question-and-answer session on matters such as the requisite procedural mechanisms in domestic court cases.
During the first half of the proceedings, the Foundation’s researchers and participating staff jointly explored an action-oriented understanding of the existing procedures and techniques for admitting conflict zone information into evidence with a view to its authenticity, reliability and probative value. Finally, the lead researcher discussed the concept of cumulative prosecution, using battlefield evidence to prosecute terrorism-related offences alongside core international crimes and current practices to this end.
The event was part of the project ‘Prosecution, Rehabilitation, and Reintegration of Returning Foreign Fighters and their Families’, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office.