Justice or Politics at the Hague

THE CONSEQUENCES OF KOSOVO INDEPENDENCE

SCAPEGOAT R.I.P.

TWO HUNDRED YEARS LATER

IF KOSOVO WHY NOT IRAQ

ANNIVERSARY OF SHAME

WAR ON TERRORISM SKIPPED THE KLA

WE CREATED A MONSTER

NATO'S BALKAN BLUNDER

JUSTICE OR POLITICS AT THE HAGUE

KOSOVO AND HUMAN RIGHTS

ADDRESS TO THE PARLIAMENT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS

THE TRAGIC BLUNDER IN KOSOVO

CONGRESSIONAL HEARING

A CRIME AGAINST THE TRUTH

NATO's BRUTE FORCE AN IMBECILIC POLICY

NEW RULES

EX-DIPLOMAT SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE WAR

NATO BOMBING - RETURN TO BARBARISM

EX-DIPLOMAT RAILS AGAINST BALKAN WAR

JUSTICE OR POLITICS AT THE HAGUE ?

For Ottawa Citizen January 28, 2001.

Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) was in Belgrade on Tuesday of this week demanding that President Kostunica hand over Slobodan Milosevic so that he might stand trial before her Tribunal in The Hague. NATO countries and the western media have been vocal in insisting that Milosevic be surrendered to the court.

It will be difficult for the new democratic authorities in Yugoslavia to refuse to do so. Economic and financial help to rebuild what the NATO bombing has destroyed will undoubtedly be conditional on cooperation with the Tribunal. Moreover, there are many Serbs in addition to his political enemies who would be happy to see the end of the man many believe responsible for the disasters that has overtaken Yugoslavia since 1990.

Nevertheless, it would appear that the President Kostunica has serious misgivings about the independence and impartiality of the Hague Tribunal. He is not alone in this. From its inception there has been doubts about the legitimacy of the Tribunal. It was not established by treaty or by the General Assembly of the United Nations as would normally be required for such a court. The Security Council alone established the Tribunal and only after heavy lobbying by the government of the United States. Whatever the legitimacy of the Tribunal, there is strong evidence to believe the Tribunal was established more to satisfy political goals than to bring war criminals to justice.

Certainly the performance of the Tribunal so far has displayed more of the characteristics of a medieval Star Chamber than an independent judicial body. A number of those who have been secretly indicted by the Tribunal have been kidnapped by armed thugs and transported against their will to The Hague to wait in detention for months or years for trial without benefit of bail. They are then required to face unknown and often hidden accusers before a Tribunal that acts as both prosecutor and judge. There is no jury. If the prisoner confesses while in custody, the confession is presumed to be voluntary. The trial may even be held in secret.

The Tribunal had a firm policy not to reveal the names of those on its indictment list. Yet Louise Arbour, the former Chief Prosecutor violated this policy when she publicly announced the indictment of Milosevic during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. There seems little doubt the announcement was timed to bolster sagging public support for the bombing. After all, who would dare oppose the bombing of a country whose leader had been indicted as a war criminal? That Louise Arbour would violate the Tribunal�s policy is not surprising. Her appointment to the Tribunal was conditional upon receiving the approval of Madeline Albright.

It is also significant that the indictment against Milosevic did not include crimes he might have committed during the Bosnian conflict but was confined to allegations about crimes in Kosovo. It would not do to have the man Madeline Albright hailed as, �a man of peace� at the time of the Dayton Accords, indicted for crimes in Bosnia after he had played such a pivotal role in bringing about an end to the bloodshed there.

At the center of the indictment against Milosevic was the infamous �Racak Massacre� alleging that Serbian security forces had murdered in cold blood forty-five Kosovo Albanian civilians. Madeline Albright has described the �Racak Massacre� as the galvanizing event leading to the air war against Yugoslavia. However, the final report published last week by the Finnish forensic experts who examined the bodies of the alleged victims confirms what many suspected at the time- that there was no evidence to show the bodies discovered in the shallow trench by United States general William Walker were executed at close range.�

It seems the victims were armed members of the KLA who were killed in the fighting that had taken place in the hills above Racak the day before. Their bodies had been placed in the trench to simulate a massacre. This would suggest that at least some of the evidence against Milosevic presented by the United States to the Tribunal to support his indictment has been fabricated.

Article sixteen of the statute setting up the Tribunal stipulates that the Prosecutor �shall not receive instruction from any government or any other source�. Yet the record of close cooperation between the Tribunal and the government of the United States suggests this article has not been respected by the Tribunal. Moreover although it is the United Nations that was to finance the Tribunal it is in fact United States money that has enabled the Tribunal to carry out its operations, thus compromising any claim of independence by the Tribunal.

The Tribunal has also been remarkably selective about who it has indicted. Almost all those so far indicted have been Serbs. To my knowledge no Muslims have yet been brought before the Tribunal. The notorious Naser Oric has not been indicted. He was the leader of the Muslim paramilitary forces in Srebrenica who used this UN safe haven as a base to raid neighboring Serbian villages and butcher all of the elderly inhabitants who were unable to flee. Oric has openly boasted to journalists of these atrocities and they are well documented but nothing has been done. Oric is managing a bistro in Tuzla numbering among his customer�s UN peacekeepers.

Another individual well known to the Tribunal is Agim Ceku, an Albanian from Kosovo, who led the Croatian forces that in September, 1993 overran Serbian villages in the Medak pocket being protected by Canadian peace keepers. After a firefight, the Princess Patricia�s Canadian Light Infantry retook the villages only to find that dreadful atrocities had been committed against Serbian civilians. Two years later Agim Ceku led Croatian forces in the infamous �Operation Storm�, that �cleansed� Croatia of its entire Serbian population. The Tribunal has not indicted Agim Ceku. On the contrary, NATO has rewarded him by appointing him commander of the Albanian security forces in Kosovo.

The most serious charge against the War Crimes Tribunal has been its adamant refusal to indict NATO leaders for violating international law and the United Nations Charter by waging aggressive war against a sovereign state without UN approval. Repeated demands by eminent lawyers from around the world have been in vain. The Tribunal has refused to accept that the bombing of civilian targets, the employment of weapons containing depleted uranium and the use of cluster bombs was a crime.

There is no question that former Yugoslav President Milosevic should face trial. Nevertheless it is unfortunate that should he go to The Hague it will be seen as an endorsement of a Tribunal that represents everything an independent international court should not be.

It has been a Tribunal dominated and paid for by its political masters. It has been a Tribunal that by any standard of measurement has been a travesty of justice. It has been a Tribunal that has sacrificed basic principals of law and due process to act as a willing tool for the achievement of US political goals and as an apologist for NATO�s political blunders in the Balkans. Let us hope that the new International Criminal Court that may soon come into existence can do better.

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