Posted on 10/09/2004 5:21:08 PM PDT by Jane_N
Fresh controversy has hit the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic with a claim from a senior intelligence analyst that the Yugoslav leader is innocent of genocide. Dr Cees Wiebes, a professor at Amsterdam University, now says there is no evidence linking Milosevic to the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, the massacre of 7,000 Muslims at the town of Srebrenica.
Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in July 1995, forms the basis of the genocide charge against Milosevic, but Wiebes, a member of a Dutch government inquiry into the atrocity, said there is nothing to link Milosevic to the crime.
'In our report, which is about 7,000 pages long, we come to the conclusion that Milosevic had no foreknowledge of the subsequent massacres,' he says in a radio programme, The Real Slobodan Milosevic, to be broadcast by BBC Five Live tonight. 'What we did find, however, was evidence to the contrary. Milosevic was very upset when he learnt about the massacres.'
The prospect of the former Balkan strongman being cleared of the most serious charge he faces is a fresh blow to an already troubled case, which begins hearing defence evidence this week after several months of delays.
Any failure to prove genocide will cast a shadow not only over this case but over the whole practicality of holding tyrants to account in war crimes trials, most obviously in the case against Saddam Hussein.
Wiebes headed a team of intelligence specialists commissioned by the Dutch government to look into the massacre because its own forces were present in the town under the UN flag.
He had access to secret files, key diplomats and hundreds of witnesses to a massacre in which Muslim men and boys as young as 12 were butchered by Bosnian Serb forces. But while clearly implicating senior Serb field commanders, including General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian army chief still on the run, Wiebes says Milosevic played no part.
He said it was understandable that Milosevic was upset 'because in this phase of the war he was looking for a political settlement and this was not very good for him'.
Wiebes also says his team offered their evidence to the Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, but were brushed off. 'What I heard from good sources in The Hague is that Miss del Ponte thinks that we're too nuanced and not seeing things in black and white,' he said.
Hague prosecutors insist this is not so, saying that the report was not relevant. Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said: 'The purpose of the report was not to deal with criminal cases relating to Srebrenica, and was commissioned... for other purposes.'
Wiebes is the first senior figure to say publicly what many Hague sources have been saying privately for some time - that there is simply no evidence to back the genocide charge.
Prosecutors have spent months trying to prove otherwise, but have drawn a series of blanks, despite the appearance of high-profile witnesses. These have included former Nato commander Wesley Clark, whose evidence in The Hague last December was that Milosevic told him he knew about the crime and tried to stop it.
Milosevic undoubtedly facilitated the killing by providing Bosnian Serb forces with guns, fuel and cash. But for a genocide conviction to stick, prosecutors must prove that he gave the order.
"You know about as much about legal matters as you do about economics."
Oh, so you are not only an expert on the Balkans, you are also a legal and economics expert? Just out of curiosity, what makes you such an expert Hoplite?
No, of course not.
You and your ilk are happiest when you're running off at the mouth to the cheers of your equally ignorant peers, and to hell with taking the time to acquaint yourselves with even the meanest of understandings of the subject under discussion.
Well just for your edification, dear Jane, Command Responsibility requires either knowledge beforehand, or the failure to act upon becoming aware of a crime after the fact.
So unless one of you clueless drones can point to a Serbian version of the Taguba report produced before the OHR put boot to Bosnian Serb ass, or a Serbian prosecution of anybody responsible for what transpired at Srebrenica, you're merely laying your ignorance painfully bare for all to see.
So in summation, Jane, what makes me an expert?
Nothing, other than I have the willingness to look up information pertinent to the discussion, such as the ICTY's statute Article 7, para 3, which makes your and Destro's positioins nothing more than uninformed garbage.
Bosnia is not part of Serbia - see Dayton accords - so your point about Slobo holding Serbian version of the Taguba report for what happened within Bosnia is moot.
Furthermore, Milosevic was continuing to support paramilitary forces in Bosnia after Srebrenica, to say nothing of paying and supplying the Bosnian Serb military for the entire duration of the war and continuing after Dayton.
So while you don't know the first thing about Slobo's complicity in the war in Bosnia, at least you used 'moot' in the proper context.
Oh, some Serbian Serbs were there - Milosoevic must be guilty! Invoking the ICTY's invented command responsibility formula would violate the concept of ex post facto law.
Which brings us nicely back to #19.
ALl you can do is insult - because you can't defend against the charge that invoking the ICTY's invented command responsibility formula would violate the concept of ex post facto law.
You're a joke, and posts are a symptom of that condition.
So don't whine about being insulted, Destro. You should be happy that in this life you're getting exactly what you deserve.
12 issues for $19.95 (66% off the cover price)
Even you can afford it at your salary, Hoplite.
I don't read law books - but neither do you and you have no answer to the charge of ex post facto ICTY law.
The point is that you're a liar.
Which makes corresponding with you a waste of time.
Just like you -confronted - insult and run away.
I've merely reminded you of your moral shortcomings and their implication as far as further discussion.
Since you can't explain away ICTY's ex post facto law on command decisions you play at being a priest or is it an imam? Maybe I can have you read my palms later on?
I can only imagine what beautiful day you have, once NIOD report is getting full attention of the media.
Confabulation about Slobo's command responsibility may soothe you as pacifier, until you finally realize that Milosevic was not in charge of Bosnian Military.
ping
Prof. Cees Wiebes is senior lecturer at the Department of International Relations and International Public Law at the University of Amsterdam. His main lecturing duties are teaching doctoral students in the field of U.S. national security policy; foreign and defense policy of the major and smaller European powers; Dutch national security policy since 1940; global security and also the relationship between intelligence and foreign policy making & execution. Dr. Wiebes has authored 18 books (three on intelligence) and more than 40 contributions to books and academic journals. From 1991 through 1999, he was Honorary Secretary of the Netherlands Intelligence Studies Association (NISA). Dr. Wiebes is a member of the Archival Committee of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a member of the Editorial Board of "Global Intelligence Monthly" and a member of the Editorial Board of the "Journal of Intelligence History." Dr. Wiebes wrote a chapter in the report on the Srebrenica fiasco that was commissioned by the Dutch Government in 1996.
If the guilt of Milosevic is so obvious, why the Hague Tribunal has such difficulties with proving it? Can you explain it?
Thanks for the information on Prof. Wiebes. Looking at his credentials, I'ld say he is more than well qualified to make the assertion that there is nothing linking Milosevic to genocide.
When has a kangaroo court ever worried about evidence?
For the same reason it is difficult to legally prove Hitler ordered the holocaust - everybody knows he did it, but there is a scarce paper trail proving the fact.
And in Milosevic's case, the documentary evidence is still to some extent under the control of his friends in the Serbian Defence Ministry, hence the Damocles sword of trade sanctions still hanging over Belgrade's head.
Nevertheless, with what documentary evidence that has been brought forth, and the vast body of non-Serb controlled information, Slobo's neck has been fitted with his noose.
That neither you, nor your friends here can recognize a rope when you see one is ultimately not my, nor the rest of the world's concern - you may as well be trying to rehabilitate Ceausescu.
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