The Hague: Yugoslavia war tribunal closes its doors after 24 years

[Palinurus]

Source: http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2017/12/yugoslavia-war-tribunal-in-the-hague-closes-its-doors-after-24-years/

Yugoslavia war tribunal in The Hague closes its doors after 24 years

December 21, 2017

The Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague closes its doors on Thursday after 24 years of hearings.

In total, the tribunal has dealt with 161 complaints of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed by soldiers, governments and private citizens.

In the 24 years since it opened, the tribunal has handed down 90 rulings, found 19 people not guilty, heard from 4,650 witnesses and carried out hearings on 10,800 days. In total, 14 countries have been involved in the punishment of perpetrators and 13 have extradited suspects to be tried.

The tribunal was the first court to undertake the prosecution for the gravest international crimes since the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.

It was set up by the UN security council in 1993, just two years after the start of the Yugoslavia conflict. The first suspect, Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic, appeared in the court in 1995 and was eventually sentenced to 20 years in jail.

The tribunal went on to put the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević, the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and Gen. Ratko Mladic in the dock. Its closing sessions were marred by the courtroom suicide of the Croatian commander Slobodan Praljak, who swallowed potassium cyanide after his appeal was rejected.

Legal landscape

‘Over the past two decades, [the tribunal] has irreversibly changed the landscape of international criminal and humanitarian law,’ the tribunal’s website says.

‘In 1993, I think, no one believed that we would have been able to bring justice to anyone […] We have proved exactly the opposite,’ ICTY president Carmel Agius told UN News.

The court has completed all judicial work, despite complex challenges, including the difficulty to bring witnesses from abroad, translation and interpretation issues, and a lack of cooperation from countries from which help was needed, he said.

Consensus

The ICTY’s legacy, international law professor Philippe Sands told the Guardian, paves the way for a broader international consensus on war crimes justice.

‘The breakup of Yugoslavia has been a catalyst with very significant consequences,’ he said. ‘The experience has been mixed. It hasn’t brought tranquility and reconciliation to the region but it has delivered … important judgments on individuals.’

The tribunal’s overall record, he said, ‘reflects the significant but limited function that international justice can play in resolving longstanding political differences. It’s one tool in an armory.’

 

[Mari]

https://hr.sott.net/article/16309-Misija-izvrsena-Medunarodni-kazneni-sud-za-bivsu-Jugoslaviju-zavrsios-radom

Some highlights from the article:

Problem ovog suda je što je stvoren kao tijelo koje prikuplja dokaze, provodi istrage, sastavlja optužnice i onda na temelju prethodno provedenih radnji donosi presude. Ovakvo što je nepojmljivo u sudskoj praksi i pravosudno tijelo automatizmom postaje represivni aparat, a presude su u velikoj mjeri politizirane.

The problem of this court is that it has been created as a body that collects evidence, conducts investigations, compiles indictments and then makes judgments based on previously conducted acts. This is incalculable in judicial practice, and the judicial body automatically becomes a repressive tool, and verdicts are largely politicized.

Na kraju se ICTY pretvorio upravo u ono što je trebao biti - marionetski sud koji koristi fašističke metode pravde i predan je provođenju selektivnih procesa iza kojih stoji plan NATO pakta za osvajanje Balkana. Postupci su tempirani i vođeni u skladu sa širom geopolitičkom strategijom širenja NATO pakta na istok Europe.

Ono što mediji prešućuju jest da je NATO koristio sud kao propagandni alat u stvaranju svoje verzije istine o nemilim događajima na prostoru bivše Jugoslavije, samo kako bi prikrio svoje zločine i kako bi republike bivše Jugoslavije lakše držao u pokornosti, opravdao agresiju i okupaciju onih koje su već u NATO paktu i imao polugu za pritisak protiv onih koje se opiru ulasku u savez.

In the end, the ICTY turned exactly to what it was supposed to be - a marionette court that uses the fascist methods of justice and is committed to conducting selective processes behind the NATO plan to conquer the Balkans. The procedures are timed and guided in accordance with the broad geopolitical strategy of expanding the NATO pact to the east of Europe.

What the media are hiding is that NATO used the court as a propaganda tool to create its own version of the truth about inconvenient events in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, just to conceal its crimes and to ease the republics of former Yugoslavia into submission, justified aggression and occupation of those who already in the NATO Pact and had a leverage to press against those who oppose joining the alliance.

Da citiram jednog od prijatelja koji kaže "kako ICTY, pod kontrolom američke politike, djeluje kao degutantna holivudska predstava za izazivanje balkanskih šovinizama i time predstavlja kontinuitet američke politike na Balkanu posljednjih 30 godina. Sve ostalo su sporedni detalji, naročito osobne sudbine pojedinaca iz Srbije i Hrvatske koji su sudjelovali u izazivanju rata, a danas ih se Amerikanci cinično rješavaju pred svjetskom javnošću, i to s mnogo smisla za dramu".

To quote one of the friends who says "the ICTY, under the control of American politics, acts as a degrading Hollywood play to provoke Balkan chauvinism, and thus represents the continuity of American politics in the Balkans for the last 30 years. All other is a side detail, especially personal destinies of individuals from Serbia and Croatia who have participated in provoking war, and today Americans cynically deal with them in front of the world's public, with much sense for drama. "

 

[Palinurus]

Thanks Mari for your time and trouble to expose another side of this controversial tribunal.