Fw: Sacirbey Bail Scandal

[Ivo Skoric]

In 1902 the territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina was ruled by the Austro-
Hungarian empire. How can the treaty with Serbian kingdom in 1902 
then apply to Bosnia-Hercegovina today? His lawyer should argue that 
Bosnia-Hercegovina NEVER was a part of Serbian kingdom, and 
consequently treaties with Serbian kingdom should be deemed 
irrelevant in this case. Until 1878, Bosnia was a province of Ottoman 
Empire. Then it fell under Austrian rule, and became a full-fledged 
Austrian Empire province in 1908. Following the WW I, Bosnia-
Hercegovina was divided in cantons that became the part of the 
Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later of Yugoslavia). It was 
never part of that kingdom as Bosnia-Hercegovina. During the second 
world war it was annexed to Nazi ruled Independent State of Croatia. 
And after the WW II it was a constituent republic of the Yugoslav 
socialist federation, which energically objected to any enforcement 
of old Serbian kingdom obligations. If there is no any example of use 
of that 1902 treaty after 1945, State Department should not have the 
case. Do they believe he is Al Qaeda to hold him, a US citizen, in 
prison for 15 months, awaiting trial on white collar charges brought 
against him by a toddler country?
ivo

On 19 Jul 2004 at 13:12, Ian Williams wrote:




MaximsNews.com Weekly Column

Bosnian U.N. Defender Locked Up

by Ian Williams 

Ian Williams is a journalist and U.N. Correspondent for The Nation 
and
a weekly columnist for www.MaximsNews.com [See his Bio.  See Ian
Williams' email:  uswarreport at igc.org ]

UNITED NATIONS -- 7 July 2004 / www.MaximsNews.com /  Saddam Hussein
is on trial, as is Slobodan Milosevic.  Radovan Karadzic and Ratko
Mladic, the dynamic duo who gave the world the siege of Sarajevo and
the slaughter of Srebrenica, are still at large but being sought. 

And the U.S.'s part in this movement for international justice and
accountability has been to hold former Bosnian Foreign Minister
Muhamed Sacirbey for fifteen months in a four by ten foot shared cell
in a Federal Prison in New York awaiting extradition to Sarajevo on
communist-era charges of "abuse of powers" while he was the Bosnian
Mission to the UN. 

So why would a State Department that has expended so much diplomatic
credit on keeping entirely hypothetical U.S. citizens out of the
clutches of the International Criminal Court be so eager to hand over
an actual living U.S. citizen like Sacirbey to a country where the
State Department's annual reports regularly excoriate the political
pliability of the judiciary and the danger to inmates in its prisons. 


Its reports said of Bosnia and Hezegovina last year, "The legal 
system
was unable to protect the rights of either victims or criminal
defendants adequately because of its inefficient criminal procedure
codes and ineffective trial procedures. 

"The judiciary remained subject to influence by political parties. 

"Judges and prosecutors who showed independence were subject to
intimidation, and local authorities at times refused to carry out
their decisions." 

Understandably, Sacirbey says his refusal to return to Sarajevo to
answer charges is because of his lack of trust in the judicial system
there, especially in the face of the political vendetta against him. 

If he were a GI awaiting extradition from, say Iraq , to an
air-conditioned cell in The Hague under accusation of torture, the
Pentagon would be plotting a rescue mission for him! 

As it is, either spectacular incompetence, or equally spectacular
malice, are the only explanations for the behavior of the U.S. State
Department and Justice Department, who, say Bosnian sources, have 
been
pressuring the judge there to maintain the charges, to the extent of
drafting his letters to the U.S. Federal Court to smooth over the
gaping differences between Bosnian and U.S. procedures. 

The U.S. has also hindered attempts by prosecutors of the
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia to interview Sacirbey
to help in the trial of Milosevic. 

It seems an odd way to repay the man who did so much to help set up
the Tribunal which is now trying Milosevic. 

Finally, last Friday, on July 1 the Federal magistrate Maas ,
embarrassed at holding someone who, as he had said a year ago, would
have been let out on bail immediately if charged with similar 
offences
in a U.S. court, allowed bail for Sacirbey - under punitive 
conditions
of five million dollars surety and house arrest in Sacirbey's Staten
Island home. 

He only did so because the Prime Minister of Bosnia over-rode the
local judge in Sarajevo , and wrote a letter stating that his
government had no objection to bail. The U.S. Justice Department has
opposed bail from the beginning. 

Sacirbey was arrested last year just as the invasion of Iraq began,
and has been held ever since under an extradition warrant executed
under a treaty signed with the U.S . in 1902 by "The Kingdom of
Servia" (sic) which the State Department considers to be valid with
Bosnia & Herzegovina through four changes of name and political
system. 

However the Department chose not to invoke Article 5 of this antique
document, which states baldly that neither state "shall be bound to
deliver up its own citizens," and Sacirbey is a U.S . citizen. 

In fact, the Sarajevo Cantonal Court judge has admitted that there 
was
no indictment in the case: the request is to interview Sacirbey, 
which
the former Foreign Minister is very happy with - if it were in the
U.S. 

Sacirbey's legal advisor in the U.S. , American University law
professor Paul Williams, maintains that under American law and under
the extradition treaty with "Servia," "There is no provision for
extradition for investigation, only when actual charges are filed. 

"The State Department should have bounced this right back to the
Bosnians, not passed it on to the Department of Justice," he 
explains.


There were early suspicions by Sacirbey and his family that there 
were
political motivations behind the execution of the warrant, based
firstly on the timing of his arrest with the start of the war on Iraq
and strong U.S. attempts to get Bosnia to sign up both for the
"Coalition" in the war against Iraq, and for the so-called Article 98
exemption for U.S. citizens being extradited to the International
Criminal Court. 

Indeed State Department official, Janet Bogue, was in Bosnia the same
week that Sacirbey was arrested, pressuring Sarajevo to sign such a
bilateral agreement. 

While the Bosnian press has rehearsed all sorts of allegation against
Sacirbey, the actual U.S. warrant from the Southern District DA's
office in Manhattan, which appeared to regard "Bosnia and 
Herzegovina"
as two separate requesting states., says the charge is  "the crime of
abuse of position or powers." 

But what led to the charges to begin with? 

In effect Sacirbey is charged with taking money from the UN Mission's
accounts and using it for "unauthorized" purposes. 

The inference drawn by many in Bosnia was that he used the money to
maintain an affluent personal life style and the Bosnian press, which
often makes the Supermarket tabloids seem like papers of record in
comparison, was happy to weigh in with irrelevant but colourful
stories about his life style and demeanour. 

Sacirbey denies the charge. 

He says he paid out money on the Bosnian President Alija 
Izetbegovic's
orders in support of the ICTY at The Hague and for the ICJ case
brought by Bosnia against Belgrade for aggression and genocide. 

Ironically the person who refused to authorize this spending was
Momcilo Krajisnik who is now in prison at The Hague for genocide. 

Izetbegovic died while Sacirbey has been in prison. 

The Dayton Agreement, masterminded with the same American
constitutional expertise now in progress in Iraq , brought the
Bosnian's Serbian enemies into the office, determined to sabotage 
many
of the public relations and legal initiatives the Bosniaks had
previously undertaken. 

People who worked with Sacirbey at the Mission during the days when 
he
was worth several divisions to the beleaguered Bosnians, point out
that he put in immense amounts of his own money to start the Bosnian
Mission to the U.N. and keep it going over the years. 

Ambassador Diego Arria, who represented Venezuela on the UN Security
Council when the Bosnian war raged says "he was fundamental in
bringing the attention of the Security Council and the international
community to the massacres and genocide going on in his country. 

"He was an ardent and forceful advocate of human rights and the
Tribunal. 

"I never had any doubt of his integrity or devotion." 

If there were any substance to the accusation, there is nothing to
stop criminal charges being laid against Sacirbey in the U.S. courts. 


But no one has tried that route. 

Extradition in fact represents an Ashcroftian black hole in the
justice system on a par with Guantanamo . 

Under existing law, the Federal Magistrate's position is simply to
certify that the documentation is in order, and then to hand the
papers on to the State Department for a political decision on whether
to extradite the prisoner - the same State Department that began the
tragicomedy originally by passing the extradition request on to the
Justice Department! 

One almost worries about publicizing the details in case John 
Ashcroft
does an end run round the Supreme Court decisions on U.S. citizens
held as terrorists. 

All he has to do is to get an unsavory client regime to request their
extradition and pop goes habeas corpus! 

It also highlights the peculiar ideological and totemistic thought
processes of the administration. 

It is prepared to confront all its closest allies on the ICC, which
has so many safeguards that no sane jurist ever envisages an American
official ever facing it, but is working assiduously to keep a real
American citizen in prison for a year and send him to a place where 
he
may not survive incarceration and will find it impossible to get a
fair trial. 

Go figure. 

Oh, and in case you had forgotten, where is Osama Bin Laden? 

    Ian Williams' email:  uswarreport at igc.org 



Ian Williams
333 E 30th St #10J
New York, NY 10016, USA
Tel:  +1 212.686 8884
 email uswarreport at igc.org
website www.ianwilliams.info

---------------------------------------------------------
Ivo Skoric
19 Baxter Street
Rutland VT 05701
802.775.7257
ivo at balkansnet.org
balkansnet.org