What is the experience of testifying in secret in a war crimes trial? This Article closely examines a single day of testimony to observe the ways in which secrecy is enacted and negotiated, and what its effects are on the perceptions and behavior of actors in the courtroom.

Like domestic courts, international courts base their legitimacy on commitments to a fair process, which they balance with the need to protect individuals and information. But international courts often have an additional goal—to render authoritative judgments that promote reconciliation—which makes the balance between publicity and secrecy especially fraught.

The tensions between publicity and secrecy are particularly acute during court sessions. Public testimony is at the heart of intuitions about public justice, an expectation that is radically challenged when a witness’ identity and words are hidden. This happens a lot: secrecy permeates the work of war crimes courts— and makes their work possible. Secrecy shapes the quotidian process of trial: layers of abstraction and uncertainty accrete and interruptions are frequent as lawyers debate which questions to ask in private. Whole exchanges get redacted, producing indecipherable records. The experience can be bewildering and alienating. The result challenges the idea that international courts produce transparent narratives likely to contribute to reconciliation. Yet, without these protections, there would be no narratives at all. These tensions are irreducible: secrecy forms the fabric of trial, shaping how it is experienced and received.

The architecture of secrecy—the many processes by which witnesses and documents arrive at the moment of trial—is largely invisible, and the effects of secrecy on international courts’ contribution to reconciliation are hard to measure. But we can see traces of that architecture, and indications of its effect on the narratives that reconciliation depends upon, in the record trial creates. This Article shows how the procedures of secrecy play out, what incentives they create, and how individuals react, on a typical day, in a typical trial. It is the 21st of February, 2011; Germain Katanga is on trial in The Hague; and an unnamed witness is about to enter the courtroom.

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