That seems obvious enough: Nothing in Croatia or Bosnia could be construed as a precedent for the UN to demand that the United States hand California over to Mexico.
Posted on 02/11/2004 8:58:33 PM PST by Int
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
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".
T o 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.
Instead of supporting Abdic, Clinton supported Iztbegovic.
Abdic and his 10-20,000 soldiers, later on fought allied with the BSA against Iztebgovic extremism.
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As for the Lisbon Agreement, Zimmerman didn't advise that signing was a good way to prevent a destructive civil war ( as every other observer was advising )..........Zimmerman's support of breaking the (unratified) Lisbon Agreement is merely another indication of how we sided with the extreme rather than moderate voice every single time.
Every single peace plan was rejected by Clinton White House. Finally the Dayton Agreement was forced upon the unelected Iztbegovic government. At Dayton, Clinton basically screwed Iztbegovic.
Iztbegovic had to abandon every last War Aim he had. Under Dayton, Iztbegovic achieved less than under Lisbon, less even less than under Vance-Owen, less than under every other serious peace plan made.
Clinton supported Bosnian extremists, pushed them into extreme positions, and then ditched them at the end.
He did the same in Kosovo and Metohija when Clinton effectively took the KLA from a couple of dozen nutcases, promoted their cause, legitimized them, and sent them guns etc. Instead of supporting the moderates in Kosovo and Metohija, Clinton backed the KLA.
After the bombing, Clinton then screwed the KLA with UNSCR 1244 & the MTA. Bush finished the job by chucking virtually the entire KLA into prison.
That seems obvious enough: Nothing in Croatia or Bosnia could be construed as a precedent for the UN to demand that the United States hand California over to Mexico.
It is beyond embarrassing for Del Ponte and her supporters that despite their millions of dollars in funding, hundreds of zealous lawyers and investigators, cases of intelligence files, hundreds of witnesses willing to make things up as they go, the ability to make up procedures on the fly and that the three-judge panel is firmly on their side, they have suffered a defeat after defeat at the hands of an elderly man with a heart condition, imprisoned, cut off from his family and friends, under constant surveillance and lacking any money or power. On October 6, 2000, Slobodan Milosevic was a political washout with a questionable legacy, accused of war crimes. Three years later, thanks to the Hague Inquisition, he can justifiably claim to be a champion of truth.
hundreds of millions
the ICTY's budget is $100 million per year. They've been after Milosevic since 1995.
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