ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the discursivity of motions and motion decisions and their relation to the materialisation of the act of testimony within trials at the international criminal tribunals (ICTR). It discusses the various ways in which legal actors- legal counsels, registrar, judges, investigators engage with memory, assembling diverse fragments of the past to be able to perform legal proceedings at the ICTR. The chapter presents three examples of how legal actors play a crucial role in the production of legal memory during the process of motions: in the ‘interest of justice’, disclosure, and rape and sexual violence. The three examples highlights the crucial role the ICTR’s legal actors- prosecutors, defence, and judges, have in the construction of the narrow and singular legal story. The conceptual offering of the ‘grey zone’ is possibly a particular challenge for scholars advocating tribunals’ ability to aid individuals’ and societies’ understanding of the past because it pushes against some of their core values.
