172. Finally, as regards the identification of the Applicant, the Respondent State’s representative explained that under Tanzanian law, "when a person knows the perpetrator, there is no need to have an identification parade, and this is what happened in this particular case", 173. The Court recalls that even if it has no power to re-evaluate the evidence on which the national court relied for the conviction, it retains the power to determine whether, in general, the manner in which the national court has evaluated the evidence is compliant with the relevant provisions [supra, para of the applicable international human rights instruments 26]. 174. In this regard, the Court first notes that a fair trial requires that the imposition of a sentence in acriminal offence, and in particular a heavy prison sentence, should be based on strong and credible evidence. That is the purport of the right to presumption of innocence also enshrined in Article 7 of the Charter. 175. The Court notes that even in Tanzanian jurisprudence, criminal conviction on the basis of a single witness is subject to strict conditions, and is clearly a situation that should arise only in exceptional circumstances. As noted by the Respondent State itself, in the Matter of Waziri Amani v. United Republic of Tanzania, the Court of Appeal/High Court declared that “no court should act on evidence of visual identification unless all possibilities of mistaken identity are eliminated and the court is fully satisfied that the evidence before it is absolutely watertight’? . The wording of this dictum clearly shows that the judge should in principle not convict on the basis of a single witness, but he may exceptionally do so only if all the possibilities of mistaken identity are eliminated and unless the testimony is absolutely unassailable. 22 See supra, note 21 [20]. © One ee = i

Sélectionner le paragraphe cible3

Se connecter à un paragraphe
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Ajouter à la table des matières