Topic: Crime and Punishment
Karadzic Trial Undermines Notion of International Justice The unfairness of the trial process against former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic exposes dangerous flaws in the idea of "international justice".by Andy Wilcoxson
(libertarian)
Saturday, September 20, 2008
On Wednesday, September 17th a status conference was held in the Hague war crimes trial of Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Bosnian Serbs. The presiding judge was Iain Bonomy from Scotland.
Karadzic's 1996 immunity deal with U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke was discussed at length. Under the terms of the agreement (which Holbrooke denies the existence of), Karadzic would not be prosecuted if he withdrew from public life. Karadzic told the court that "Mr. Holbrooke wasn't speaking only in the name of America, but it was agreed upon by all the members of the Security Council."
Judge Bonomy explained the issue as he saw it saying: "there is a legal issue involved in your submission and that goes to the power of a person such as Holbrooke to give undertakings on behalf of a Tribunal. And that also is an issue that has to be approached and determined by the Trial Chamber. In other words, whether even if all you've said is true, it ought to have or could have any influence or impact on the work of an independent Tribunal."
This is an interesting legal question because the Tribunal derives its jurisdiction from UN Security Council Resolution 827. Whether or not the UN Security Council had the authority to establish the Tribunal in the first place is debatable, but let's leave that aside for the moment. If one assumes that the Tribunal was lawfully established, but it is shown that the UN Security Council granted immunity to Karadzic, then where would the Tribunal get the authority to put him on trial -- if not from the Security Council?
During the status conference, Dr. Karadzic reiterated his determination to represent himself in the upcoming trial. He said, "Nobody who were to appear in this courtroom can know the facts as well as I do." He explained his mission to the court saying, "I have to hold the reins of my defense in my hands, first of all, to determine the truth about our conflict ... I'm not defending myself in actual fact. What I am defending are the people over there who have suffered."
He explained that he could not appoint a defense attorney because, "I wouldn't have the right to dismiss counsel, and I'm not ready to be a thing here, an object. I'm not prepared to be passive and to have other people decide on matters that concern me."
Unlike most Western legal systems, an accused does not have the right to fire their attorney at the Hague Tribunal unless the judges agree. During the Milosevic trial, the Tribunal imposed a British defense lawyer named Steven Kay on the defendant against his will. Mr. Kay told the Tribunal that he was "unable to positively advance a defense or contest evidence" and he tried to resign, but the Trial Chamber (which Judge Bonomy also sat on) wouldn't let him quit.
Dr. Karadzic complained because he is not being given transcripts of the court sessions in the Serbian language. If he wants to review a day of court testimony, he is expected to sift through the real-time tape recording of the Serbian interpretation and physically listen to the part of the tape that he's interested in. Anybody who has ever searched for their favorite song on a cassette tape knows how cumbersome that process can be -- now imagine if the tape was a six hour long court session and you were looking for a particular piece of testimony.
Fairness to the accused is clearly not a concern at the Tribunal; otherwise English and French wouldn't be its official languages. The Tribunal only tries people from the Former Yugoslavia, and those people don't speak English or French. The vast majority of them speak some variation of the Serbo-Croatian language. It would make a lot more sense if English and Serbo-Croat were the official languages of the Tribunal.
The Tribunal has the resources to translate everything into French (for a trial where the Judges and the Prosecutors all speak English and the Accused speaks Serbian), but it says it lacks the resources to translate the trial into the Serbian language. That excuse wasn't good enough for Karadzic. He said, "If they are poor in resources for such a large trial, then the question arises as to whether the shop can go on working ... just as a human being cannot be half girl and half fish (a mermaid), this either has to be a fair trial or no trial at all."
Even though the court transcripts aren't being provided to Karadzic in a language that he understands, the prosecution is bound to provide him with certain documents that it feels support the indictment. The problem which has arisen is that many of the documents they've provided are incomplete, and often times the CD-ROMs that contain the documents are inaccessible using the computer and software provided by the Tribunal. But that might all be academic anyway, because the Prosecution has said that it will amend the indictment.
Dr. Karadzic does not know what he'll ultimately be charged with and he says that's making it difficult for him to prepare his defense. He told the Trial Chamber, "I would like to see what it is that I'm up against. I'd like to know what the indictment is and what the Prosecution holds against me. I would also like to see the supporting material, what they have against me in that material, I would like to receive all of that. I would like it to be of proper quality so I know what I'm up against. That is a basic matter ... I ask you to ask them to set a dead-line today when they're going to come up with this new indictment."
The Judge Bonomy responded saying, "I've got to work, as you have to work at the moment, with the indictment we've got, it's the only one we've got. And there might never be another one see the light of day. I don't know ... the problem I have is that the Prosecution can propose the amendment of an indictment at any time. I can't set a time-limit by which they must submit the motion. All I can do as a member of a Trial Bench is take into account any delay in tendering the proposed amendment when we come to decide whether to allow the Prosecution to amend the indictment."
Regardless of whether Karadzic is guilty or innocent of the things he's accused (and I think he's innocent); it benefits nobody for the trial against him to be this blatantly unfair. If he's guilty, the unfairness of the trial process itself will cast doubt on the verdict. If he's innocent we'll all get to witness a panel of international judges, accountable to nobody, railroad an innocent man.
At a minimum Karadzic should be tried in a language that he understands, he should have an effective right to legal counsel that he can fire, the charges against him should be clearly set out, and he should be provided with documents in a complete and timely fashion. Otherwise this isn't a trial, it's a lynching masquerading as a trial.
Andy Wilcoxson administers a website where he covered Milosevic's trial in The Hague. He recently finished writing a book about the break up of Yugoslavia based on the information that came to light during the course of Milosevic's trial. He was a founding member of Milosevic's defense committee in The Hague. He can be reached via e-mail.
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Posted By: Stephen Paton
Date: 2008-09-22 05:43:27
Truely the greatest farce so far is that the accused is expected to enter a plea , but the prosecution are unwilling to tell him the charge he is to respond to , which Western justice system functions in that way ?!
Unfortunately, the world is infected and contaminated with people who view Dr. Karadzic as "guilty" of whatever, and they are not prepared to let facts confuse them. So according to them, Dr. Karadzic "has to plead guilty" to the "crime" of being the democratically elected president of Republika Srpska.
To Athens from Marathon the runner Phidippides took 36 hours. For the “Srebrenica Massacre” story to break it took CNN a month to begin ramping up the story. it took 2 full months to coin the boiler plate "Srebrenica Massacre"
Are we to believe the thing happened on 11 July 1995 and was kept secret for two months? No leaks?
I searched LEXIS-NEXIS for the following catch-phrases. Not one report with these parameters appears UNTIL weeks after 11 July 1995:
(Srebrenica AND massacre) turned up 166 articles.
(Srebrenica AND missing): turned up 314
(Srebrenica AND 7000 OR 8000) turned up 44 articles.
(7000-8000 men and boys) turned up 269articles.
11 July 1995: “Iranian foreign minister [Velayati], in a message to the UN secretary-general, has asked for immediate action to PREVENT a massacre of the defenceless people of Srebrenica by the Serb rebels. SOURCE: Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1, Tehran, in Persian 0930 gmt 11 Jul 95; Source: Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1, Tehran, in Persian 0930 gmt 11 Jul 95; SECTION: Part 4 Middle East; THE MIDDLE EAST; IRAN; ME/2353/MED. Message to UN secretary-general. Text of report by Iranian TV on 11th July.
18 July 1995: Reports from the front.TheNY Times headline of 18 July 1995 (by-line Chris Hedges) reported that 3,000 to 4,000 Muslims missing after the fall of Srebrenica had “slipped” through Serbian lines to safety in Tuzla. Hedges himself said the Muslim fighters were armed and fighting, the 50 some miles to Tuzla. Plenty of these Mujahids got their ticket to paradise for their slaughter and impalings of Serb villagers around Srebrenica from Christmas 1992 onwards.
7 August 1995: The news would have still been hot when Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote an Op-Ed piece in “The New Republic” , under the headline: AFTER SREBRENICA. Zbig says only that something awful “might” happen. Nowhere does Brzezinski mention a “Srebrenica massacre”.
11 August 1995. US Ambassaador to the UN Madeleine Albright told a closed session of the Security Council on 11 August 1995 that 2,000 to 2,700 Bosnians from the Srebrenica enclave were missing and might have been shot by the Bosnian Serbs. No mention of a "Srebrenica massacre".
19 August 1995 (Guardian article): David Rohde spearheads the story that later became known as “the Srebrenica Massacre”; he did not himself use any such phrase or make such a claim.(find “...I saw what appeared to be a decomposing human leg protruding from freshly turned dirt...” Rohde repeated Albright’s fabrication about a massacre in a soccer stadium in a nearby town, [where] human faeces, blood, and other evidence indicated large numbers of people were confined, and perhaps shot. ... United Nations official estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 Muslim men are still missing in the wake of the Srebrenica and Zepa assaults.”
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