Karadzic Trial Begins in The Hague

The trial of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader who stands accused of genocide, began yesterday in The Hague. But the accused refused to appear, claiming he needed more time to prepare his defense. Karadzic's recalcitrance will remind many of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic made a mockery of the proceedings and died before a verdict could be issued. Next fall we will publish the definitive account of the Milosevic trial, Judith Armatta's Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Armatta, a lawyer, sat inches away from Milosevic throughout the entire trial as she served as an observer for the Coalition for International Justice, a human rights organization. Her book presents both a day-to-day account of the trial and analysis of its significance as well as personal accounts of victims of the Balkan wars. Armatta argues that the trial set an important precedence and that studying and understanding it is crucial to future efforts to bring war criminals (like Karadzic) to justice. After the jump, read an excerpt from this important forthcoming book.

Excerpt from Twilight of Impunity by Judith Armatta. Copyright Duke University Press 2010.

For nearly three years I sat in a courtroom in The Hague, observing what was billed as “the trial of the century.” Slobodan Milosevic was accused of sixty-six counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide for his role in the decade-long conflict that tore Yugoslavia apart, leaving over 100,000 people dead, millions displaced, and a way of life destroyed. His path to the courtroom was one of power, carnage, and hubris brought low. Mine evolved over a five-year odyssey that began in Belgrade in 1997, when Milosevic was still Serbia’s president. I was sent by the American Bar Association’s Central and East European Law Initiative (ABA/CEELI) to assist a group of dissident judges establish an independent judges’ association and to support other rule-of-law efforts. A year after fighting ended in Bosnia and Croatia, Milosevic’s power was shaken by three months of Serbian demonstrations against his autocratic rule. After the democratic opposition squandered its victory through infighting, Milosevic reasserted authority by fomenting yet another war to drive the majority Albanian population out of Kosova. When NATO began bombing Serbia and Montenegro and hundreds of thousands of refugees poured over the borders, I left for Macedonia to document what was happening. The stories we gathered from refugees—of rape, murder, beatings, property destruction, looting, and forced deportation—formed part of the data used by the ICTY to indict and prosecute Slobodan Milosevic.
    When the war ended and Serb forces withdrew from Kosova, I returned to work in Montenegro, then went home to the United States for a respite that included my mother’s last year of life and her death. In the meantime the Serbian people ousted Milosevic from power and, one year later, their new, reform-minded prime minister, Zoran Djindjic, orchestrated his handover to the ICTY, responding to pressure from the United States. Milosevic would stand trial for the most grievous crimes associated with his ten-year reign of destruction. When the Coalition for International Justice, a human rights organization in Washington, offered me a front-row seat at his trial, I jumped at the chance to see law applied to the man who had used it as a tool to distort reality at great cost to people and to the rule of law itself.
    This book is my account of the trial, from the beginning to its bitter end over four years later. It is not the definitive trial record, nor entirely objective. Who we are—our values, interpretation, and worldview—determines what we see. My years in the former Yugoslavia inform my point of view. The trial of Slobodan Milosevic is more personal for my having lived under his rule and seen the havoc he made of people’s lives—Serbs as well as Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Kosovars, and Croats, friends and colleagues as well as strangers.
    In March 1998 I sat on a couch in Pristina, Kosova, looking at photographs of massacred civilians, men, women, and children, some horribly disfigured from being shot at close range. At a Women in Black conference I listened to Bosnian women from Gorazde describe how they survived a multiyear siege and bombardment of their city, Muslims and Serbs looking out for one another.1 In Belgrade I walked past a legless veteran who was no longer of any use to the army that left him to beg on the streets for survival. A friend in Montenegro told me of a woman badly beaten by her husband, who threatened to kill her when she confronted him about sexual assaults he had committed during the war. I saw the bullet-ridden skeletons of buildings and houses in Sarajevo, Vukovar, Mostar, and Dubrovnik; the yellow ribbons marking off areas still mined years after the war; soldiers carrying Kalishnikovs running in formation through the streets of Belgrade, just as they had walked the streets of Pristina to intimidate and frighten; UN tanks in the narrow streets of Sarajevo; people who feared crossing a border with the wrong license plate, or speaking the wrong dialect; the vacant eyes of those who had seen too much. On and on the images and words float in my memory.
    They brought me to The Hague, where people do not shoot guns to celebrate. Yet this placid Dutch city housed men accused of responsibility for the most heinous crimes imaginable. Among them was Slobodan Milosevic, for three years a man I would see more often than my partner, friends, and loved ones. I watched and listened as the famous and the common folk took the stand to describe how he had destroyed Yugoslavia and its tolerant, multiethnic way of life. The survivors confronted him with their very personal losses—of family, friends, and communities, of wholeness and peace of mind, of trust in their neighbors and humanity. Milosevic watched it all with no apparent remorse, sympathy, or compassion. He brought his yes-men (and a few women) to play the parts he had written for them, describing a fantasy world where Serbs were always and only victims, never causing harm. Milosevic attempted to manipulate and undermine the trial, at the same time that he used it to further the “myth of Milosevic,” which he himself had created. And then he died, robbing many, including me, of some hoped-for resolution. It would have to be enough that he spent his last years confined to a jail cell and a courtroom, compelled to listen as his victims recounted the suffering and loss that his obsession with power had caused. It is more than the vast majority of dictators ever face. And it is an important marker on the road to ending the impunity of powerful men who destroy hundreds of thousands of lives as if they were brushing off a fly. Is it the twilight of impunity, as the title of this book suggests, or is that merely a hope? Only time will tell, but I offer this book in an attempt to tip the scales a little more toward justice.

Comments

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What It’s Like to Chill Out With Whom the World Considers the Most Ruthless Men in the World Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic and Goran Hadzic (+) Confessions of a Female War Crimes Investigator

http://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/what-it-s-like-to-chill-out-with-whom-the-rest-of-the-world-considers-as-the-most-ruthless-men-in-the-world-ratko-mladic-and-radovan-karadzic-confessions-of-a-female-war-crimes-investigator
(Read My Entire Book Here For Free Now).

Retrospectively, it was all so simple, natural and matter of fact being on a boat restaurant in Belgrade, sitting with, laughing, drinking a two hundred bottle of wine and chatting about war and peace while Ratko Mladic held my hand. Mladic, a man considered the world’s most ruthless war criminal since Adolf Hitler, still at large and currently having a five million dollar bounty on his head for genocide by the international community. Yet there I was with my two best friends at the time, a former Serbian diplomat, his wife, and Ratko Mladic just chilling. There was no security, nothing you’d ordinarily expect in such circumstances. Referring to himself merely as, Sharko; this is the story of it all came about.

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'''Irrefutable Proof ICTY Is Corrupt Court/Irrefutable Proof the Hague Court Cannot Legitimately Prosecute Karadzic Case By Jill Starr

http://picasaweb.google.com/lpcyusa
(The Documentary Secret United Nations ICC Meeting Papers Scanned Images)

https://sites.google.com/site/jillstarrsite/irrefutable-proof-icty-is-corrupt-court-irrefutable-proof-the-hague-court-cannot-legitimately-prosecute-karadzic-case

This legal technicality indicates the Hague must dismiss charges against Dr Karadzic and others awaiting trials in the Hague jail; like it or not.

Unfortunately for the Signatures Of the Rome Statute United Nations member states instituting the ICC & ICTY housed at the Hague, insofar as the, Radovan Karadzic, as with the other Hague cases awaiting trial there, I personally witnessed these United Nations member states having a substantial conversations, and, openly speaking about trading judicial appointments and verdicts for financial funding when I attended the 2001 ICC Preparatory Meetings at the UN in Manhattan making the iCTY and ICC morally incapable trying Radovan Karazdic and others.

I witnessed with my own eyes and ears when attending the 2001 Preparatory Meetings to establish an newly emergent International Criminal Court, the exact caliber of criminal corruption running so very deeply at the Hague, that it was a perfectly viable topic of legitimate conversation in those meetings I attended to debate trading verdicts AND judicial appointments, for monetary funding.

Jilly wrote:*The rep from Spain became distraught and when her country’s proposal was not taken to well by the chair of the meeting , then Spain argued in a particularly loud and noticably strongly vocal manner, “Spain (my country) strongly believes if we contribute most financial support to the Hague’s highest court, that ought to give us and other countries feeding it financially MORE direct power over its decisions.”

((((((((((((((((((((((((( ((((((((((((((((((((((((( Instead of censoring the country representative from Spain for even bringing up this unjust, illegal and unfair judicial idea of bribery for international judicial verdicts and judicial appointments, all country representatives present in the meeting that day all treated the Spain proposition as a ”totally legitimate topic” discussed and debated it between each other for some time. I was quite shocked! The idea was “let’s discuss it.” "It’s a great topic to discuss."

Some countries agreed with Spain’s propositions while others did not. The point here is, bribery for judicial verdicts and judicial appointments was treated as a totally legitimate topic instead of an illegitimate topic which it is in the meeting that I attended in 2001 that day to establish the ground work for a newly emergent international criminal court.))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

In particular., since “Spain” was so overtly unafraid in bringing up this topic of trading financial funding the ICC for influence over its future judicial appointments and verdicts in front of every other UN member state present that day at the UN, “Spain” must have already known by previous experience the topic of bribery was “socially acceptable” for conversation that day. They must have previously spoke about bribing the ICTY and ICC before in meetings; this is my take an international sociological honor student.

SPAIN’s diplomatic gesture of international justice insofar as, Serbia, in all of this is, disgusting morally!SPAIN HAS TAUGHT THE WORLD THE TRUE DEFINITION OF AN “INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT.”

I represented the state interests’ of the Former Yugoslavia, in Diplomat Darko Trifunovic’s absence in those meetings and I am proud to undertake this effort on Serbia’s behalf.