FWD: The Guardian of London: The Milosevic trial is a travesty [of justice]

[Andrej Tisma]

A forwarded article:
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The Milosevic trial is a travesty

Political necessity dictates that the former Yugoslavian leader will be
found  guilty - even if the evidence doesn't


Neil Clark
Thursday February 12, 2004
The Guardian

It is two years today that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic opened at The
Hague.
The chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, was triumphant as she announced the
66 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide that the
former Yugoslavian president was charged with. CNN was among those who
called it "the most important trial since Nuremburg" as the prosecution
outlined the "crimes of medieval savagery" allegedly committed by the
"butcher of
Belgrade".

But since those heady days, things have gone horribly wrong for Ms Del
Ponte.
The charges relating to the war in Kosovo were expected to be the strongest
part
of her case. But not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove
Milosevic's personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground,
the
nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into
question.

Numerous prosecution witnesses have been exposed as liars - such as Bilall
Avdiu, who claimed to have seen "around half a dozen mutilated bodies" at
Racak, scene of the disputed killings that triggered the US-led Kosovo
war.  Forensic evidence later confirmed that none of the bodies had been
mutilated.  Insiders  who we were told would finally spill the beans on
Milosevic turned out to be  nothing of the kind. Rade Markovic, the former
head of the Yugoslavian secret  service, ended up testifying in favour of
his old boss, saying that he had been  subjected to a year and a half of
"pressure and torture" to sign a  statement  prepared by the court.
Ratomir Tanic, another "insider", was shown to have  been
in the pay of British intelligence.

When it came to the indictments involving the wars in Bosnia and Croatia,
the  prosecution fared little better. In the case of the worst massacre
with which  Milosevic has been accused of complicity - of between 2,000
and 4,000 men  and  boys in Srebrenica in 1995 - Del Ponte's team have
produced nothing to challenge  the verdict of the five-year inquiry
commissioned by the Dutch government - that  there was "no proof that
orders for the slaughter came from Serb political  leaders in Belgrade".

To bolster the prosecution's flagging case, a succession of high-profile
political witnesses has been wheeled into court. The most recent, the US
presidential hopeful and former Nato commander Wesley Clark, was allowed, in
violation of the principle of an open trial, to give testimony in private,
with  Washington able to apply for removal of any parts of his evidence from
the public record they deemed to be against US interests.


For any impartial observer, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that
Del Ponte has been working backwards - making charges and then trying to
find evidence. Remarkably, in the light of such breaches of due process,
only  one  western human rights organisation, the British Helsinki Group,
has voiced  concerns. Richard Dicker, the trial's observer for Human

Rights Watch,  announced  himself "impressed" by the prosecution's case.
Cynics might say that as  George Soros, Human Rights Watch's benefactor,
finances the tribunal, Dicker  might not  be expected to say anything else.



Judith Armatta, an American lawyer and observer for the Coalition for
International Justice (another Soros-funded NGO) goes further, gloating
that  "when the sentence comes and he disappears into that cell, no one is
going  to  hear from him again. He will have ceased to exist". So much
then for those  quaint old notions that the aim of a trial is to determine
guilt. For  Armatta,  Dicker and their backers, it seems that Milosevic is
already guilty as  charged.


Terrible crimes were committed in the Balkans during the 90s and it is right
that those responsible are held accountable in a court of law. But the Hague
tribunal, a blatantly political body set up and funded by the very Nato
powers that waged an illegal war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia four years
ago -  and  that has refused to consider the prima facie evidence that
western leaders  were guilty of war crimes in that conflict - is clearly
not the vehicle to do so.


Far from being a dispenser of impartial justice, as many progressives still
believe, the tribunal has demonstrated its bias in favour of the economic
and
military interests of the planet's most powerful nations. Milosevic is in
the
dock for getting in the way of those interests and, regardless of what has
gone
on in court, political necessity dictates that he will be found guilty, if
not
of all the charges, then enough for him to be incarcerated for life. The
affront to justice at The Hague over the past two years provides a
sobering lesson   for all those who pin so much hope on the newly
established international  criminal court.

The US has already ensured that it will not be subject to that court's
jurisdiction. Members of the UN security council will have the power to
impede
or suspend its investigations. The goal of an international justice system
in which the law would be applied equally to all is a fine one. But in a
world in which some states are clearly more equal than others, its
realisation  looks further away than ever.



Neil Clark is a writer specialising in east European and Balkan affairs


                Guardian Unlimited (C) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004