Posted on 10/10/2005 1:50:11 PM PDT by neverdem
Slated to start October 19, the "trial of the century"—a title previously bestowed on the trials of Alger Hiss, Adolf Eichmann, and Michael Jackson—is set to beam from the Middle East into American living rooms. But before we get sucked into the spectacle of Saddam, seven henchmen, and five judges, it's worth checking in with another has-been despot. Hussein is not the first dictator to be removed from his country at the behest of the U.S. government, accused of war crimes, and held up for judgment; he's the second in five years.
Slobodan Milosevic may no longer be the big draw among dictators awaiting judgment, but his trial at The Hague, now in its third year, chugs along whether the media show up or not. While the rest of the world has turned has been tuned into Saddam, Journalist Chris Stephen has been covering Milosevic and an international court's first crack at justice. Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic, is his brave attempt to remind us that someone, somewhere, is still paying attention to international law.
Though it bills itself a "courtroom drama," Judgement Day is a polemic in support of international justice. It's not a particularly subtle one. In the first 500 words of so, we are told that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic is "one of the greatest criminal trials ever held"; that the "future of war crimes justice itself" hangs in the balance; that this is "truly epic"; that "never before has an entire justice system hinged so heavily on the result of a single case." Stephen believes the Hague tribunal is a test case for the International Criminal Court, and he's convinced that the International Criminal Court is the future of justice.
Launched in 1993, the tribunal was an ad hoc answer to the ongoing atrocity in Bosnia. One of the court's architects refers to it as "Frankenstein," a slapped together mishmash of laws from the Geneva Conventions, western legal tradition, and Hague law. The court was stuffed in the headquarters of an old insurance company, chronically under-funded and understaffed. It was born at the behest of the Clinton administration and wholeheartedly rejected by the Bush administration. Yet eight years after its inception, prosecutors had snagged Milosevic and built a massive case against him.
Stephen's retelling of the court's humble beginnings is a good read, but he is at his best in retelling the complex tragedy of the former Yugoslavia. He deftly guides us through the vicissitudes of a nation with a predilection for tearing itself apart, healing for a bit and then ripping out the sutures. In stark prose, he relates the rape, massacre, beatings and starvation that marked Milosevic's rule. "Pieces of flesh had been pasted onto the walls by the force of the blasts," runs a typical description. After images like that, the trial falls like a flat punch line.
To recap: In the summer of 2001, the Bush administration announced that all aid to Yugoslavia would stop unless authorities handed Milosevic to The Hague. Impoverished after years of war and subsequent sanctions, Serbia accepted the ultimatum. The court, now swollen to over 1000 employees, spent February 2002 through February 2004 trying to pin 66 war crimes charges to the unrepentant Slobodan. Milosevic has thanked them with a series of tactics that include presenting a witness list of 1613 names (including President Bill Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair) and killing massive amounts of time with a tangential, half-serious defense. The Hague (formal name: The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations in International Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia Since 1991) does not have a knack for brevity.
There are many worrisome objections to an international criminal court, and not all of them hinge on the paranoia of a superpower with a distaste for multilateralism. You will find none of them in this book. Stephen largely ignores the concern that the threat of international justice may prolong a conflict by blocking a leader's exit. If he is even slightly bothered by the moral colonialism implied in strong-arming a nation to surrender its villains, Stephen never lets onto the fact. Instead, he spends 150 pages building the case that Slobodan Milosevic is a bad guy. Milosevic is clearly a man who belongs behind bars, but that tells us little about the right of an international tribunal to put him there.
Reading Stephen's account of the chaotic proceedings, it's hard to see the trial as anything more than a bizarre denouement after a string of atrocities. Instead of tackling this frontloaded story, he cheerleads the bureaucratic quagmire that marks its end. Saddam's upcoming trial, held in the nation he terrorized, conducted by Iraqis who endured his regime, may prove no more satisfying than the dispassionate Hague. But at the very least, the best way to bring a dictator to justice remains an open question; it is unclear that Milosevic's painfully slow trial is an argument for trial-by-international-consensus.
The Hague may well be the best response we have to the horrors of the former Yugoslavia. Judgement Day fails to grasp that it's still a woefully inadequate one.
Kerry Howley is an assistant editor of Reason.
bump
"People who know the differences would see that the Hague court is a joke."
Exactly, which is why the US must never submit to its jurisdiction or that of any other international court.
Milosevic is no saint, but he's been framed nevertheless in order to set a precedent. There was an awful chance that Clinton would cop a plea on the Racak massacre hoax just to help establish that an American president could be charged and tried in an international court after which he would obviously skate.
Alas, bumping a banned Destro will do you no good...
Though we remember him well and hope that he lurks for the good of humanity!
Yes, the ICTY and the ICC are connected. They are both largely the brainchildren of the islamist fifth columnist Cherif Bassiouni!!!! While bin Laden and Zarqawi attack us from without and CAiR hammers us from within with their crude propaganda, the "international lawyer" Bassiouni secretly eats away at us, also from within. He uses our precious system of jurisprudence and concern for human rights against us, in order to replace them with sharia law and islamoNazi tyranny.
Abolish ICTY! Abolish ICC! Stop the islamofascist attack on the Western judicial system!!!!
bumping a banned Fusion (FreeRepublic's only true Islamofascist) will do you no good...
The Hague Tribunal is the BIGGEST horror of all, a parody of Moscow show trials from 1930s.
For tactlessly responding with facts and links to those that support Clinton's retched misadventures in the Balkans!
He watches us from his lair... bidding his time.
Fusion is now a legendary myth and we must always pay him homage!
M. Cherif Bassiouni, J.D., LL.M., S.J.D., LL.D. Hon. (Mult.)
President of the Institute
Professor of Law
Email: cbassiou@depaul.edu
J.D., Indiana University; LL.M. (International and Maritime Law), The John Marshall Lawyers Institute; S.J.D. (International Criminal Law), George Washington University; Doctor of Law, Honoris Causa, University of Torino (Italy), University of Pau (France), Niagara University (U.S.A.) and National University of Ireland, Galway (Ireland).
M. Cherif Bassiouni is a Distinguished Research Professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law and President of its International Human Rights Law Institute. He is also President of the International Institute of Higher Studies in Criminal Sciences in Siracusa, Italy, as well as the President of the International Association of Penal Law, based in Paris, France.
He has served the United Nations in a number of capacities, including: Member and then Chairman of the Security Council's Commission to Investigate War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia (1992-94); Commission on Human Rights' Independent Expert on The Rights to Restitution, Compensation and Rehabilitation for Victims of Grave Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1998-2000); Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the 1998 Diplomatic Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court; and the Vice-Chairman of the General Assembly's Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (1995). In 2004, he was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as the Independent Expert on Human Rights in Afghanistan.
In 1999, Professor Bassiouni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court. He has received medals from Austria, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. He has also received numerous academic and civic awards, including the Special Award of the Council of Europe; the Defender of Democracy Award, Parliamentarians for Global Action; and The Adlai Stevenson Award of the United Nations Association.
Professor Bassiouni is the author of 24 and editor of 44 books, and the author of 217 articles on a wide range of legal issues, including international criminal law, comparative criminal law, and international human rights law.
http://www.law.depaul.edu/institutes_centers/ihrli/about/bassiouni_m.asp
M. Cherif Bassiouni, J.D., LL.M., S.J.D., LL.D. Hon. (Mult.) President of the Institute Professor of Law Email: cbassiou@depaul.edu
The Middle East Institute would like to thank Xenel Industries Ltd. of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Alireza family for their generous support in the design and maintenance of this web site. We also thank the author, Professor M. Cherif Bassiouni, who graciously authorized the electronic publication of his book in order to further our mission of improving American understanding of the culture of the Middle East.
http://www.mideasti.org/indepth/islam/introislam.htm
Says who??? What evidence is there but for US paid for testimony from muslims who consider slicing a Christian's throat and rapping a pre-teen Christian child as all in a day's work.
Fact is the only reason our rapist president built a bogus case against a pagan fighter was to turn away attention from his own bloody war crimes - the real reason Bush2 is in opposition to a permanent international war crimes tribunal. Professional courtesy between sewer scum.
This is what Bassiouni is up to lately--in conjunction with the terrorist-connected CAiR, of course! No wonder he's smiling in the picture you posted!!
___________________
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=4b9c92074d3ee0e6299dbf57da128d74
Muslim Americans Call for Renaissance in Islam
India West , News Report, Michel W. Potts, Oct 03, 2005
ANAHEIM, Calif. - After the greater Muslim community of Southern California donated a reported $420,000 to the Council of American Islam Relations during its tenth annual banquet, held Sept. 17 at the Anaheim Convention Center here, keynote speaker Prof. M. Cherif Bassiouni presented them with a challenge and a proposal.
A Distinguished Research Professor at the DePaul University's College of Law, Bassiouni noted in his speech how former attorney general John Ashcroft had publicized the presence of sleeper cells in the country, increasing fear among the American public and consequently fostering more prejudice against Muslim Americans.
"When you look at these cases (in which Ashcroft claimed that home grown terrorists across the country had been arrested), you will find in all of these cases that charges were never proven," he pointed out to the audience.
All Americans, irrespective of religion, "have a big challenge ahead of us," he argued. "The challenge is to restore the rule of law to this country...It is obvious that if you have a system where the rule of law prevails, or where the rule of law can be bent, or where the rule of law can be politicized, then you are going to find victims and, right now, the victims are the Muslims."
Bassiouni proposed that Muslims in this country seriously consider forming a national council of learned Muslims scholars. "What we really need to do is to start a movement what I would call a renaissance of Islam," he proclaimed.
Muslims who have lived in the United States for any length of time "have done little to denounce the so-called Muslim regimes all over the world, who have been nothing else but corrupt and inefficient, (and) we have done little to denounce the type of backward-ism in the name of Islam that have we seen by many persons whose knowledge of Islam is limited," he added.
"And we have said and done very little to engage ourselves in the renaissance of Islam in the Muslim world. Maybe now the time has come. Maybe this is the challenge. Maybe this is the best thing that would have happened to Muslims, to be kicked in the back after 9/11 and to wake up."
One of the highlights of the evening was the presentation of the Bridge Builder Award to David Stacy, a Christian who agreed to uproot his life and live in a large Muslim community for 30 days in Dearborn, Mich., as part of a Fox Channel documentary that attempted to portray what it is like to be a Muslim in America.
Bridge Builder Awards were also presented to Sadia Shakar and Shamail Huk, a Pakistani couple who opened their home to Stacy, who had to follow the ground rules of dressing like a Muslim and observing all Islamic traditions as well as reading the Koran daily. By the end of 30 days, his perceptions of Muslims had radically altered.
The evening's program opened with speeches by local elected officials. Orange County Sheriff Michael Corona announced that, in conjunction with CAIR, his office has put together a law enforcement educational awareness tape, not just about Muslims, but "about the religion, the culture, traditions and habits so that law enforcement has an understanding what Islam is all about." "We've trained 1,500 deputy sheriffs but the videotape is to go out to law enforcement across the country free of charge."
Matt MacLaughin, special projects supervisor for the Los Angeles FBI office, recounted that the Multicultural Advisory Committee, formed in 1991, is to provide access to law enforcement officials during its monthly meetings and announced that the committee will have its first townhall meeting Oct. 2 in the San Fernando Valley. Many members are Sikhs who now have seats on the committee because "they are actually targeted in hate crimes more than Muslims are," he noted.
Similarly, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca announced the creation of a Muslim American Homeland Security Congress, in which every mosque and all Muslim organizations in America will be invited to participate, "and every Muslim family will be invited to join on this as well," he said.
"We are forming the organization in such a way that it is a Muslim-run organization," he added. "It'll have an advisory council and I spoke to Congresswoman Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the congressional committee regarding terrorism and homeland security, and she quickly volunteered to be on that advisory council."
While CAIR executive director Hussam Ayloush noted that the money raised that evening will go toward the operational expenses of the Los Angeles chapter, CAIR California chairman Fouad Khatib said that at least 20,000 free copies of the Koran had been given away in a campaign to educate non-Muslims in an understanding of the holy book.
Islamic Center of Greater Houston president Rodwan Saleh informed the gathering that Houston police office M.H. Siddiqi, who has established a liaison between the local Muslim community and the police department, will be honored at the White House Oct. 2 as "one of the best cops in America."
"A Distinguished Research Professor at the DePaul University's College of Law, Bassiouni noted in his speech how former attorney general John Ashcroft had publicized the presence of sleeper cells in the country, increasing fear among the American public and consequently fostering more prejudice against Muslim Americans."
HOW DARE ASHCROFT PUBLICIZE THE PRESENCE OF SLEEPER CELLS! DON'T THE POOR POOR MUZZIES HAVE ENOUGH TO CONTEND WITH WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY GENERAL SPILLING THE BEANS? lol! (PUKE)
was nominated for a Nobel Prize.
There is a difference. Stalin's show trial was accepted out of fear, Hague kangaroo court is accepted out of free will.
There is a difference. Stalin's show trial was accepted out of fear, Hague kangaroo court is accepted out of free will.
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