The other guy said it more cynically, but how does this "trial" hold any weight? A backwater nation, trial held in absentia.. doesn't seem very legitimate, yknow?
The idea behind universal jurisdiction is that some crimes pose so much of a threat to the global order that no nation should give perpetrators safe harbor. The need for a way to try people for acts that would be considered horrific crimes elsewhere was quite pressing and universal jurisdiction was considered a way of dealing with it in a sort of vigilante style. The setting up of the International Criminal Court in 2002 alleviated much of the concern, though apparently not all of it.
Such questions as which crimes are sufficiently serious to warrant violation of sovereignty and what constitutes commission of them, the burden of proof required for conviction, due process rules such as whether in absentia trials are valid, and the like seem to get little consideration.
As a result, good-faith efforts like the KLWCC's to raise awareness wind up not being very convincing and are easy to dismiss as political posturing. The KLWCC was set up by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who has long been a strident critic of US foreign policy, even going so far to suggest that the 9/11 terror attacks were staged by the US Government. So you can guess as to the impartiality of the judicial proceedings. There's an interesting analysis here:
