The Balkan Conflicts Research Team is continuously producing superb, hard-hitting and intellectually provocative Twitters about Srebrenica and the Hague Tribunal. We highly recommend them to our readers who may follow them by visiting their Twitter account at: Balkan Conflicts Research Team@ResearchTeam
The tweet on ICTY’s Myths of Srebrenica is their latest production.
How did the ICTY deal with Srebrenica?
Superficially and dishonestly.
How so?
To this day, there is no hard evidence to support any of the principal claims of a genocide at Srebrenica. But, through its various genocide trials, the ICTY has created an illusion that such proof exists.
How was this managed?
The ICTY contracted the collection of forensic and DNA evidence to the International Commission for Missing Persons, an American-controlled and Bosnian Muslim-run organisation. The ICTY then allowed the ICMP to present its ‘evidence’ merely in the form of a verbal account of findings. The primary evidence was never made available to the Tribunal, nor – and much more importantly – were defence teams allowed access to it. Yet the Tribunal chose to accept what the ICMP said as proven fact.
Was this so bad?
Yes. This was perhaps the most fundamental abuse of a core principle of justice, that defendants should be able to see, and examine in every aspect, evidence levelled against them – particularly such crucial and sensitive evidence as forensics and DNA identifications.
Even so, wasn’t the picture painted broadly correct?
We don’t know. The claim that 8,000 people were executed at Srebrenica has not been substantiated in any way. The figure seems incredibly unlikely: some 39,000 survivors of Srebrenica can be accounted for – but best estimates of its population at the time it fell to the Serbs were under 40,000. One ICTY Judge, Patricia Wald who sat on the Krstic genocide trial, wrote later that Srebrenica had 37,000 inhabitants at the time it fell.
What else?
The ICMP’s alleged ‘breakthrough’ DNA technique seems far too good to be true. Their claimed mass graves discoveries came after body parts had been buried for more than 5 years. Most were fully decomposed. Most were excavated in an extremely unprofessional way. The chances of making more than 6,800 identifications at a rate of well over a thousand a year on the basis of DNA samples taken from bone and bone marrow would seem to be a resounding nil.
What was the ICMP’s game?
Well it certainly wasn’t a bone-fide, impartial investigator. Its job was to create ‘evidence’ to sustain the guilty verdicts the ICTY was programmed to hand down. This was of course much easier to do when normal rules-of-evidence were totally disregarded.
How did the ICTY get away with this?
The climate of anti-Serb bias created by wild reports of the humanitarian catastrophe taking place in Bosnia meant few cared much about the rights of Serbian defendants. The ICTY and the ICMP also had the great comfort of knowing that laws had been passed in Bosnian and Croatia giving the ICMP total immunity to resist any attempt to subpoena its primary forensic and DNA evidence.
So what of the ICTY genocide verdicts?
They were all based on propaganda, not fact. The ICTY’s illegal ability to write its own laws, such as the new crime of Joint Criminal Enterprise, made this easy as pie.