Under article 14, paragraph 1, everyone is entitled not only to a fair but also to a public hearing; moreover, according to article 14, paragraph 3(d), the accused is entitled to be tried in his presence. According to the travaux préparatoires to the Covenant, the concept of a “public hearing” must be read against the background that in the legal system of many countries, trials take place on the basis of written documentation, which is deemed not to place at risk the parties’ procedural guarantees, as the content of all these documents can be made public. In my opinion, the requirement, in paragraph 1 of article 14, for a “public hearing” must be applied in a flexible way and cannot prima facie be understood as requiring a public oral hearing. I further consider that this explains why, at a later stage of the travaux préparatoires on article 14, paragraph 3 (d), the right to be tried in one’s own presence before the court of first instance was inserted. noted that the right to be tried in one’s own presence has not explicitly been spelled out in the corresponding provision of the European Convention on Human Rights (art. 6, para. 3(c)). This in my opinion explains why the European Court of Human Rights, unlike the Committee, has found itself bound to interpret the concept of “public hearing” as a general requirement of “oral”. The formulations of article 14, paragraphs 1 and 3(d), of the Covenant leave room for a case-by-case determination of when an oral hearing must be deemed necessary in review procedures, from the point of view of the concept of “fair trial”. With regard to Mr. Karttunen’s case, an oral hearing was in my view undoubtedly required from the point of view of “fair trial” (within the meaning of article 14, paragraph 3(d)), as Mr. Karttunen had explicitly asked for an oral hearing that could not a priori be considered meaningless. In accordance with the Committee’s case law, there can be no a priori assumption in favour of public oral hearings in review procedures. It should be 112