Provisional Release in International Human Rights Law and International Criminal Law

This article is a review of the jurisprudence on provisional release and an analysis of how such a mechanism operates under the Statute of the International Criminal Court. It examines how pretrial release is dealt with in international human rights law while focusing on the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. It goes on to evaluate the position of the ad hoc tribunals regarding the issue of pre-trial release and seeks to articulate how and why the ad hoc tribunals have moved away from customary international law. It also seeks to evaluate the actual reach of the presumption of innocence in provisional release cases at the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Formen Yugoslavia. Finally, the article considers the recent jurisprudence of the ICC regarding interim release.