| Submit your comments on this article |
| Doubt aired on genocide case against Milosevic |
| 2004-02-26 |
| The prosecution in Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial moved yesterday to rest its case two days early as the chief prosecutor conceded her team had not produced "the smoking gun" to convict the former Yugoslav president of genocide, the most serious charge against him. "I know that I don’t have the smoking gun on the count of genocide, and we will see what the trial chamber decides," chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said in an interview only minutes after she signed a motion to end the prosecution’s two-year case. Other than the bodies, you mean. "The facts are not in dispute by us. We can prove the facts, but genocide needs a specific intent, a subjective element, and it is very difficult to prove," del Ponte added. Slobo was in charge. He gave the orders. Am I missing something? But she insisted prosecutors were confident they had established Milosevic’s guilt on the litany of other charges of crimes against humanity and breaches of the Geneva Conventions for his role in the savage campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans throughout the 1990s. Conviction on those charges, specialists in international law and trial observers say, would almost certainly ensure that Milosevic would spend the rest of his life in Digital enhanced surprise meter reads "0.000". Her decision to rest the prosecution’s case two days early was due, she said, to the ill health of Milosevic and the chief judge in the case. On a doctor’s recommendation, the trial has been suspended for nearly two weeks because of the 61-year-old Milosevic’s high blood pressure. His various ailments, including heart trouble and fatigue, have resulted in more than 100 days of delays in the two years since the trial got underway. High blood pressure? I have a dozen drugs that can fix that in a day. Get on with the trial! There were also concerns, del Ponte said, of further delays caused by the announcement on Sunday that the presiding judge, Richard May, 65, would resign in three months because of a serious illness that was not identified. May, a British judge who presided over two years of hearings and nearly 300 witnesses, said in a letter to the tribunal that his illness made it impossible for him to continue. If the prosecution’s motion is accepted on Monday, it would trigger a three-month recess in the trial, which del Ponte said would allow time for a new judge to be appointed and get caught up on the details of the case before Milosevic, who is a trained lawyer, begins his own defense. Del Ponte said that under the rules of the court, the United Nations was permitted to impose a new judge. Nonetheless, she conceded it was possible that Milosevic would seize on the development to file for a mistrial. She said there was "absolutely no risk" of mistrial because the entire proceedings have been videotaped and transcribed, which would allow a new judge to pick up the case when Milosevic begins his defense. There are some 30,000 pages of transcripts and 600,000 pages of filings by the prosecution, as well as hundreds of hours of videotaped testimony by witnesses. So the new judge will be busy weekends. Amid the turmoil in the case and new questions over whether the prosecution clearly established a genocide case against Milosevic, international law specialists are concerned about where the case appears to be headed. "An acquittal would have serious implications not only for attempts to prosecute genocide in the future, but also for efforts that might be undertaken to prevent it from occurring," said Stacy Sullivan, a research director who has followed the Milosevic trial for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based nongovernmental organization. Sullivan recently published a paper analyzing the consequences of an acquittal on genocide charges. You might not be able to deal with genocide, but the 101st Airborne has a way of dealing with it. "It would also disappoint victims, and provide ammunition for those who would deny that genocide took place," Sullivan added. Victims? They’re still dead, aren’t they? Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide," which examines why some countries have failed to prevent genocide, said that del Ponte’s acknowledgments on the prosecution’s genocide case were "very significant." "It’s the first time she said this publicly. It seems the prosecution is preparing themselves, the people in the Balkans, and people all over the world who care about international law for an acquittal on the count of genocide," said Power. Nice job, Carla -- instead of getting the goods on Slobo, you’re "preparing" the rest of us. Milosevic is alleged to have orchestrated the Serbian military campaign that led to the fracturing of Yugoslavia, and to have presided over the atrocities that took place in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. In order to prove genocide, the UN-appointed tribunal has set the bar high, saying the prosecution needs to establish not only that Milosevic orchestrated the crimes, but that he did so with a specific intent to destroy Bosnian Muslims as a people. And while you’re at it, prove that he lusts after power. Asked whether she was concerned about the impact an acquittal on genocide charges could have on victims, del Ponte said, "I don’t think it will be a great difficulty for the population as such." "The dead ones will still be dead, after all." "If you meet with the victims of these crimes, they want justice, and justice for the victims is that the guilty stay in prison for life. That is what they want, punishment," she said. You can’t give them what they want, Carla. |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #4 "Slobo was in charge. He gave the orders. Am I missing something?" That both are in doubt. Karadjic and Mladic were in charge of the particular genociders -- as far as I know atleast (and I admittedly haven't been following the case much) there's no clear certainty how much Milosevic was ordering them and how much he was simply allied with and supporting them. Milosevic is still the mastermind of brutal unjust wars and mass murder, I just don't know how much he was involved in the actual genocide business. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-2-26 9:12:54 PM |
| #3 Thus we see demonstrated the crushing superiority of the UN/multilateralist/law-enforcement approach to dealing with terrorism and tyrrany. What? Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny? |
| Posted by: Mike 2004-2-26 7:10:41 PM |
| #2 There is alot to be said for military tribunals for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Of course the LLL wants all the gitmo-types to be civilian trials, because they can make a mockery of the justice system. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-2-26 5:18:20 PM |
| #1 This is why whoever takes OBL should Mirandize him after the brainscan flatlines. |
| Posted by: Mr. Davis 2004-2-26 4:43:32 PM |