VI
establishing the Statute of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights (see
supra, paragraph 5).
16. The Court should therefore have used the powers inherent in its judicial
function and the principle that “the court knows the law” (jura novit curia), to
rule on the basis of the general principles of procedural law as enshrined in the
aforementioned four instruments.
17. It is in light of the aforesaid principles of procedural law that the Court
should have interpreted Article 28 (3) of the Protocol and 67 (1) of the Rules,
unless the said principles are being deliberately set aside in order to throw the
revision remedy wide open, the effect of which would however be to distort the
revision institution.
18. Before pronouncing on the admissibility of the Application for Revision,
the Court should therefore have clearly spelt out all the conditions for
admissibility of such an application regardless of whether or not such conditions
had been expressly prescribed by the Protocol and the Rules.
19. A perusal of the grounds for the Judgment (paragraphs 32-52 of the
Judgment) gives the impression that the conditions providing the grounds for
revision of a judgment are two in number: “the requirements concerning time
limit and the discovery of new evidence” (paragraph 35).
20.
However, the said conditions are, in my view, five in number:
1) The Application must be grounded on the “discovery” of an “evidence”,
2) The evidence, discovery of which has been invoked, must be of such
nature as can exert decisive influence on the initial judgment,
3) Such evidence must not have been within the knowledge of the Court and
of the party which invokes it, prior to the delivery of the said judgment,
4) The party invoking such evidence must not have been negligent in being
unaware of the evidence in question,
5) The Application for Revision must have been brought “within six
months from the time the evidence discovered came within the knowledge
of the party concerned”.
21. It would then have been enough for the Court to indicate, as it did in
paragraph 51 of the Judgment, that the afore-listed conditions are cumulative
and that in case any of them has not been met, the Application for Revision must
be dismissed; and then determine whether the said conditions have actually been
met in the instant case.
22. The Court however proceeded directly to consider the requirement
concerning “the discovery of new evidence” without indicating what that