In September, the Trial Chamber imposed counsel against the clear wishes of the defendant, a practice described by the United States Supreme Court as having been largely abandoned since the unlamented late 16th and early 17th century Star Chamber, an executive entity infamous for trying political cases. The Chamber’s decision to impose counsel with broad powers to determine the strategy of the defense created a crisis, as defense witnesses refused to cooperate with imposed counsel Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins, previously ICTY-appointed amici curiae (friends of the court), thrust upon Slobodan Milosevic as defense advocates, oblivious to the fact that they’d been parties in the proceedings for over two years, and that this created-- at minimum-- an apparent conflict of interest. Mr. Kay complained bitterly, and publicly, about the non-cooperation of the defense witnesses (the Chamber had received Slobodan Milosevic’s list of witnesses when they imposed counsel), and complained of Milosevic’s lack of cooperation as well, as the proceedings came to a virtual standstill with a mere trickle of witnesses making the trip to testify in The Hague.
The imposition of counsel upon an unwilling accused-- in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which provides for the minimum fundamental right to defend oneself in person-- was approved, as a matter of law, by the Appeals Chamber (the initial imposition was appealed against by Mr. Kay and Ms. Higgins) last November. The ruling reduced this right-- which is guaranteed by the ICTY’s own Statute as a minimum fundamental right-- to the rank of a mere "presumption". In so doing, the ICTY’s President, American Theodor Meron, stated that all the "minimum" fundamental rights afforded to the accused by the ICTY’s Statute (which were imported, almost verbatim, from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, leaving out only—inexplicably-- the Covenant’s provision of the right to be tried by an independent, impartial, and competent court) were "at a par" with the right to represent oneself in person. In other words, the right for a defendant to represent himself is just a "presumption" as are all the other basic, fundamental, internationally recognized, minimal trial rights provided by the ICTY’s Statute, such as the right to know the nature of the charge, the right to remain silent, the right to present evidence in the same conditions as the Prosecutor, the right to an interpreter, and the right to be tried in one’s own presence. In fact, they are all stripped of their essence as rights. The ad hoc international legal order holds them to be mere "presumptions" to be violated at the discretion of a trial chamber when expedient, or "justified".
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=434
There's an interview here with one of Karadzic's legal advisors on Canadian campus radio: http://www.taylor-report.com/audio/stream.php?file=Taylor_Report-2009-12-14
The attorney's website on Karadzic is here (the Holbrooke docs are particularly interesting. Wonder how they'll stickhandle that one. A wild guess: by doing whatever they want?):
http://www.peterrobinson.com/ICTY/Karadzic/Karadzic_ICTY.html