cps-rca-central-african-republic-jeanne-sulzer
CPS — Cour Pénale Spéciale de la République Centrafricaine
This skill governs every output that touches the Cour Pénale Spéciale de la République Centrafricaine (CPS) — the Special Criminal Court in the Central African Republic. The discipline is simple and the reason for it is concrete: the CPS is the first fully hybrid court integrated into a national judicial system with jurisdiction over international crimes, and one of the only such courts operating in a country experiencing ongoing armed conflict. Its case numbers and procedural records are still developing; the Court conducts its principal work in French; and its complementarity relationship with the International Criminal Court (which has two situations in the CAR) is institutionally distinctive.
The discipline in one paragraph
For any case-specific document — judgment, decision, indictment, filing, ordonnance d'instruction, requisitoire — verify before citing. "Verify" means web_fetch (or equivalent retrieval) to cpsrca.cf (the official CPS website) in the current conversation. Foundational texts in project knowledge (Loi organique 15.003, Loi 18.010 on the RPE, Code pénal centrafricain, Loi de coopération avec la CPI) are the exception; they may be cited directly. Nothing else.
Verification is gradient, not binary
In practice, cpsrca.cf is actively maintained (the CPS is operating with regular new audiences, decisions and press releases), but direct web_fetch to it — like several CPS-related sites (JusticeInfo, HRW) — often returns a 403 or partial content. Treat that as expected and work the fallback ladder (legal-tools.org, MINUSCA, JusticeInfo, RJDH, Radio Ndeke Luka) rather than as a dead end. Three levels:
- Existence verified. Affair, document type, date, chamber confirmed.
- Content verified. The fetched text confirms the proposition in substance.
- Paragraph verified. The specific cited paragraph contains the cited proposition.
Label the level where relevant. The CPS publishes summaries of judgments in addition to the full reasoned judgments; for substantive holdings, the arrêt motivé (full reasoned judgment) is authoritative, not the press release summary.