R v Sussex Justices, Ex parte McCarthy ([1924] 1 KB 256, [1923] All ER Rep 233) is a leading English case on the impartiality and recusal of judges. It is famous for its precedence in establishing the principle that the mere appearance of bias is sufficient to overturn a judicial decision. It also brought into common parlance the oft-quoted aphorism: “Not only must Justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.” The sentiment expressed by the judges in 1924 is not just as pertinent today but also serves as the perfect backdrop for Prof. Višeslav Simić’s incisive analysis of the Hague Tribunal and “all its works,” supplementing and updating John Laughland’s memorable classic on the same subject, Travesty: The trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice [2007]. Prof. Simić’s essay is a sordid chronicle not just of the appalling abuses but also potential for new mischief inherent in the operation of this legally dubious quasi-court.
Višeslav Simić is professor at Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City, since 2010. He is currently based at the International Relations Department, Campus Cuernavaca, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México. He was Project manager and acting director of an international humanitarian and development organization in Moscow and Tbilisi, 1995 -1997. He also served as member of an ICTY investigative team for crimes committed at Čelebići concentration camp in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
B.A. in international relations from University of Colorado at Boulder. Master in International Cooperation from Ortega y Gasset Institute in Madrid, Spain. Ph.D. in public policy, from EGAP Tec de Monterrey, in Mexico.
The Hague war crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was declared by its founders and operators a great success and pride of the so-called international community’s efforts to punish criminals and to bring justice to the victims. Yet, its questionable and suspicious methods and dubious results are perceived as unjust, one-sided and prejudiced in the Balkans, and have already been used in political discourse there for national and religious mobilization in order to organize and prepare for confrontation with other nations and religious communities. This text attempts to present at least some of those perceptions.
Introduction [1]
“No one is happy and no one is satisfied,
no one is at peace, and no one is serene.”[2]
The above quoted verses by the great 19th century Serbian poet, His Grace the Bishop and Sovereign Prince of the ecclesiastical state of Montenegro (“Black Mountain and the Hills”) Petar Petrović Njegoš, may most concisely describe the results of the Hague Tribunal’s work as seen by the peoples of former Yugoslavia, especially Serbs and Croats. They also may be used to point out the perceived shortcomings of its prosecutorial competence since the late poet himself was almost put in the dock posthumously by the prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia since 1991[3] (in further text: ICTY or The Tribunal), Katrina Gustafson. Prosecutor Gustafson cast serious ideological aspersions on Njegoš’s magnum opus “The Mountain Wreath,” written almost 150 years before the civil war that devastated the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia even started. (In Serbia Today, 2014)
In spite of the tragic circumstances of the Hague trials, such outbursts of prosecutorial zeal often brought much-needed comic relief to the proceedings, and in the process strengthened the conviction about its dilettantism and levity in the minds of many Southern Slavs and other ex-Yugoslavs, who had already relished many a circus-like ICTY moment, such as the calling of an eyewitness of the alleged crimes of Serbia’s President Milošević, only to see a completely blind man mount the witness stand, as the trial was broadcasted live in the Balkans. The eyewitness later admitted that he didn’t see anything but only heard some third- and fourth-hand village gossip. ICTY Rules of Procedure and Evidence, Rule 89(c), says: “A witness who has heard the testimony of another witness shall not for that reason alone be disqualified from testifying.” As Angela Stavrianou pointed out in her article Admissibility of Hearsay Evidence in the Special Court for Sierra Leone: “The Trial Chamber in the ICTY has held that the admission of hearsay does not compromise the rights of the accused.”
In this context we may remember the great and controversial Hannah Arendt and invert her shocking conclusion about the banality and ordinariness of the criminals during the reign of Hitler in order to be repulsed by the even more disquietingly revolting banality and ordinariness of the stupefying bureaucrats gathered at the Hague by, as Helle Porsdam (2009, p.5) points out, “the World’s Only Remaining Superpower,” so that its teleology may be fulfilled. Had the ancient tribal gods had such banal and ordinary prophets instead of the fiery and convincing ones, one might dare imagine a very dull world sluggishly inching to the teleological future prophesied by them.
The Nuremberg trials established a principle that:
“Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual State. He who violates the laws of war cannot obtain immunity while acting in pursuance of the authority of the State if the State in authorising action moves outside its competence under international law.”[4]
Yet, during the decades of the Tribunal’s operations international legal standards seemed all but abandoned and abolished by the individuals hired to break new ground in international law in the Hague. In the Western Balkans many skeptical intellectuals remembered the infamous agreement between Stalin and Churchill regarding the fate of the Nazis after WWII. According to Michael Bess (2006, p. 263), as Churchill wanted them executed Stalin reprimanded him that, “[i]n the Soviet Union, we never execute anyone without a trial.” Churchill reportedly snapped: “Of course, of course. We should give them a trial first.” Many a joke was cracked in ex-Yugoslavia, imagining Andrei Kozyrev similarly reprimanding the zealous-for-overcoming-the-Munich-Syndrome Madeleine Albright, or François Mitterrand likewise rebuking the even more eager Bill Clinton, desperate for proof of his foreign relations competence. Often, ex-Yugoslavs wondered who could reprimand the Hague judges for following what was perceived as the application of “The Führer Principle” all over again, although it was ruled unacceptable during the Judges Trial at Nuremberg. Of course, in the case of the Hague judges, the Führer was understood to be collective—the Washington/Brussels/London elites who uncompromisingly[5] commanded the world from the heights of their moral superiority.
Returning for a moment to the aforementioned Bishop-Prince Njegoš—he, although removed a century and a half from the events of the 1990s in Yugoslavia and writing a work of poetry about occurrences that transpired a century before his time, was nevertheless abused by accusations of instigating a civil war in the Balkans. Yet, another religious leader, the Bishop of Rome, John Paul II, very much alive and most directly involved at the time of the Yugoslav armed conflict, was never brought at least to the witness stand, if not to the dock for the accused, for his state’s and his personal verbal and actual participation in the preparation and execution of the destruction of a sovereign and founding member of the UN, whose tribunal The Hague spectacle was declared to be. The last president of Yugoslavia, Stipe Mesić, and first president of Slovenia, Milan Kučan, testified to that publicly:
“I wanted to convey the idea of the break-up of Yugoslavia to those who had the greatest influence on its fate, to Genscher and the Pope. In fact, I had three meetings with Genscher. He enabled a contact with the Holy See. The Pope and Genscher agreed with the total break-up of SFRY.” (Mesić, NTV, 1995)
“JUDGE MAY: […] That is what Mr. Mesic said, something along those lines; is that right?
THE WITNESS: (Interpretation) Yes.” (Kučan, ICTY Cross-examination, 2003).
That perceived omission of duty by ICTY is not going to be forgotten—at least not by the Serbs—since the 1946 Nuremberg Judgment of the International Military Tribunal ruled that “the [Nuremberg] Charter makes the planning or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties a crime,” and “Article 7 of its Charter expressly declares: The official position of defendants, whether as Heads of State, or responsible officials in government departments, shall not be considered as freeing them from responsibility, or mitigating punishment.”
Surprising Common Agreement on the Need for a War Crimes Tribunal
A surprising thing happened in ex-Yugoslavia—overwhelming majorities of each nation, ethnic minorities and religious communities, that seemed not to be able to agree on anything, agreed that there was a need for a war crimes tribunal. In the case of non-Serbs, it looked as if they expected it to be only for “others” (mostly meaning the Serbs), for “our people” didn’t commit any crimes but “we defended ourselves from Serb aggression”— as every non-Serb group astoundingly believed and claimed. Most Serbs also seemed to have wanted a Tribunal to be established, mostly hoping that this time around crimes against Serbs would get punished, but also, most Serbian intellectuals wanted the Tribunal to prosecute Serb war crimes suspects as individuals so that collective Serbian responsibility, so strongly propagated by many in the Western media, some Western politicians, and other ex-Yugoslavs, could be avoided.
After ICTY was established and started trying suspects, there was an almost euphoric support for it among Croats, Bosnia-Herzegovinians and Serbia’s Moslems (Albanian and Slavic), since it was mostly Serbs that ended up in the dock. As soon as non-Serbs started getting indicted and arrested, a terrible anticlimax was experienced among Croat Catholics and Moslems from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even prominent politicians and intellectuals of those ex-Yugoslavs came out against the Tribunal and published very critical works about it and the West in general. (Pečarić, Stih, 2001) The same pattern was noticed when the turn came for Serbian Albanians to be indicted and taken to the Hague, after the initial almost unanimous support for it waned among them. (RTS, March 16, 2011)
As time passed, a matter that seemed to be uniting all former Yugoslav nations and groups in mistrust and condemnation of the Tribunal arose: the perceived ICTY’s total blindness to the crimes committed by anyone from the so-called West, especially the US. It revived the old proverb from the era of Moslem occupation, attesting to the impotence of the conquered and disempowered: “The Qadi accuses you—the qadi judges you.” (Ranke, 1829, p. 59) ICTY dismissed such opinions, stating that its jurisdiction was limited only to the unfortunate souls on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia, but many people still point out that one of the individuals perceived as most responsible for the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the US ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, who actually was physically in the country during the period of time ICTY’s mandate covered, but was never indicted for the greatest of all crimes—crime against the peace. Not only was he responsible for preventing the Yugoslav authorities to stop the armed conflict in the first place, as Jean Bricmont states in his book “Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War”:
“[…] of the Lisbon agreements of February 1922, the Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, James Bissett, has written, ‘The entire diplomatic corps was very happy that the civil war had been avoided – except the Americans. The American Ambassador, Warren Zimmerman, immediately took off for Sarajevo to convince [the Bosnian Muslim leader] Izetbegovic not to sign the agreement.’ Zimmerman later admitted this, although he claimed, implausibly, just to be helping Izetbegovic out of an agreement with which the latter was uncomfortable. However, according to ‘a high-ranking State Department official who asked not to be identified,’ quoted in the New York Times, ‘The policy was to encourage Izetbegovic to break the partition plan. It was not committed to paper.’ That was Bush Sr.” (2006, pp. 50-51)
He also was crucial in causing Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Moslems to break the Cutilheiro peace agreement reached in Lisbon, Portugal, in February 1992, opening the way for war, as the ex-Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, testified, according to Andy Wilcoxson, on www.slobodan-milosevic.org:
“The former Canadian ambassador testified that American interference caused war to erupt in Bosnia and Kosovo. He testified that in March 1992 (one month before the outbreak of war in Bosnia) Portuguese diplomat Jose Cutilheiro brokered a peace agreement in Lisbon between Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. Bisset said that the agreement had been signed by Karadzic for the Serbs, Boban for the Croats, and Izetbegovic for the Muslims. The witness, a career diplomat, believed that the Cutilheiro plan was a good plan that would have avoided war in Bosnia if it had been implemented. Unfortunately, the Cutilheiro plan was never implemented. Bisset testified that the then American ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmerman, flew to Sarajevo and met with Izetbegovic. He testified that Zimmerman sabotaged the peace plan by encouraging Izetbegovic to remove his signature from the agreement. Soon after his meeting with Zimmerman, Izetbegovic reneged on the agreement and civil war broke out in Bosnia. Far from being the peace seeking humanitarians they claimed to be, Bisset testified that the Clinton Administration prolonged the Bosnian war by sabotaging the Vance-Owen plan and the Owen-Stoltenberg plan.” (2006)
The Recommendations in ICTY’s Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are still remembered in the Balkans as one of many examples of Western hypocrisy:
“90. […] NATO has admitted that mistakes did occur during the bombing campaign; errors of judgment may also have occurred. Selection of certain objectives for attack may be subject to legal debate. On the basis of the information reviewed, however, the committee is of the opinion that neither an in-depth investigation related to the bombing campaign as a whole nor investigations related to specific incidents are justified. In all cases, either the law is not sufficiently clear or investigations are unlikely to result in the acquisition of sufficient evidence to substantiate charges against high level accused or against lower accused for particularly heinous offences. 91. On the basis of information available, the committee recommends that no investigation be commenced by the OTP in relation to the NATO bombing campaign or incidents occurring during the campaign.” (ICTY, no date given)
Another US citizen, as Jared Israel points it out in his article “The Boss Pushes for Civil War in Yugoslavia,” Peter Galbraith, “was ambassador to Croatia during the planning and execution of Operation Storm. In that massive military assault, during which he was shown on Croatian TV riding a tank, 250,000 Serbs, mostly farming families, were driven from their ancestral lands by the Croatian Army.” (1999)
Yet, he was never brought to justice but advanced in his diplomatic career.
Pointing out such examples is not simply a case of a tu quoque attempt at defense or evasion of guilt, a defense strategy declared unacceptable at Nuremberg (Heise, 2006), but a legitimate complaint and a serious warning about violations of most basic moral rules, and an accusation of a breach of legal professional duty by the very “measure” (this term will be explained later) that was supposedly created in order to ensure legality and legitimacy, and to provide an example of a possible global methodology for achieving long-term, if not permanent, security, justice and peace in international affairs.
Belief in the Illegality of ICTY by many ex-Yugoslavs, especially the Serbs
Although it was a person with a rare form of brain cancer who is believed in the West to had coined the phrase “perception is reality,” (Kelner, 2014), the Yugoslav peoples seem to have constructed their own reality about the Tribunal based on their own perceptions of it — a reality very different from the one created by those who believe that they are fashioning and managing global opinions.
Starting with the very legality of the creation of the Tribunal, and ending with its declaration of successfully fulfilling its own self-proclaimed mission, there is a whole range of points that challenge the smooth narrative presented to the world as a new foundation upon which the New World Order’s edifice of peaceful coexistence is to be built — each hole in this fertile soil of doubt and suspicion is a growing medium for the germination of seeds of future discord, hatred, and desire for revenge and wars in the Balkans.
Even the groups that profited the most from the Tribunal’s perceived tampering with justice are aware that in a different disposition of geopolitical moods and caprices they could have been on the losing side, and they murmur behind the backs of the West’s strongmen and warlords[6] that the proud tower of their imagined success is built on very shaky grounds. That is so mostly because the starting point of the Tribunal is generally believed to have been illegal, thus, in many minds, rendering every and all of its rulings potentially null and void and yet another vain exercise in the projection and imposition of power on the principle that might makes right.
Most legal scholars, even if they would not admit it publicly for fear of ostracism in the West, are acutely aware of the UN Security Council’s legal incapacity to create by fiat a subsidiary body dedicated to criminal justice. This belief in the West’s fiat is supported strongly by a famous event, as reported by a US official, James Rubin (Thakur, 2013, p. 146) — Madeleine Albright’s infamous reply to the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, when told by him that the British government “had problems with their lawyers [who believed] it was illegal [to attack Serbia]. Albright’s response was to ‘Get More Lawyers’”, apparently to give the politically, if not legally, correct answer she sought, and eventually received.
At the time of its creation, the Secretary General of the UN, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, warned the world body that the procedures are being violated, since there is no universal legislative organ that could create the Tribunal:
“The approach which in the normal course of events would be followed in establishing an international tribunal would be the conclusion of a treaty by which the member states would establish a tribunal and approve its statute. This treaty would be drawn up and adopted by an appropriate international body (e.g. the General Assembly or a specially convened conference), following which it would be opened for signing and ratification. Such an approach would have the advantage of allowing for a detailed examination and elaboration of all issues pertaining to the establishment of the international tribunal. It would also allow the states participating in the negotiation and conclusion of the treaty to fully exercise their sovereign will in particular whether they wish to become parties to the treaty or not.” (Boutros-Ghali, 1993, Section 18)
The very UNSC Resolution that was used to create the Tribunal made it very clear that semantics didn’t play a significant role in the minds of its writers, turning the Tribunal into a “measure” instead of “institution,” by interpreting the clause of Chapter VII of the UN Charter as giving the Security Council the right to take measures to maintain or restore international peace and security. Even this was conveniently ignored when NATO attacked Yugoslavia in 1999, since there was no international war going on, until NATO violated the peace and created conditions of incredible insecurity with its bombs.
Boutros-Ghali also made it very clear that “this approach would have the advantage of being expeditious and immediately effective,”[7] thus substituting political expediency in furtherance of US policy for legality and proper form.
Another important matter in international law and custom was abolished by this illegal act—the positive international law that, through the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 and the Geneva Conventions of 1949, entrusted prosecution of those crimes to national courts of the signatory states. It was suspended and the competence of national courts was annulled. This decision by the UNSC also allowed ICTY, by its Statute’s Article 15, to create its own rules and to be its own legislator.
The ultra vires action by the UNSC, at a time when Russia and China were politically incapacitated, is seen as a self-abrogating deed since the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, which was used to endow it with supposed legality, didn’t give it such authority at all and was limited to the sphere of international security. Judicial matters were to be handled by the International Court of Justice only. Yet, the US, the main power that pushed for the creation of ICTY, withdrew from ICJ in 1986 after it ruled against what the US perceived as its interest, and later decided to accept the court’s jurisdiction only on a case-by-case basis. The US also regularly uses its veto power to prevent any enforcement of the court’s decisions by the UN Security Council’s resolutions.
In addition to this, all legal scholars (and most of the educated people in the Balkans) know that the US never submitted to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, in spite of the Clinton administration’s toying with the idea by signing the Rome Statute in 2000, but never submitting the treaty for the Senate’s ratification. To bring the level of hypocrisy to a new height, the US Congress passed a law in 2002 — The American Service-Members’ Protection Act — its Title 2 authorizing the US President to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any U.S. or allied personnel being detained by, on behalf of, or at the request of the International Criminal Court.”
To ensure the West’s complete moral bankruptcy in the eyes of ex-Yugoslavs, the US also developed a legal loophole by citing the Rome Statute’s Article 98 as a basis for bilateral immunity agreements with foreign governments, which prohibit transfer of US citizens to the custody of ICC, even if a state has signed and ratified the Rome Statute. The European Union attempted to pose as an upholder of international law and justice in 2002 by issuing a common EU position that “candidate states” may enter “into US agreements,” “tak[ing] into account that some persons enjoy State or diplomatic immunity” and are “present on the territory of a requested State because they have been sent by a sending State.” (General Affairs and External Relations Council of the European Commission, p.10) It is a common joke in the Balkans that such “powerful and sovereign” states as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro have concluded the infamous Article 98 agreement with the US (Georgetown Law Library, Article 98 Agreements Research Guide), while Kosovo incorporated into Article 153 of its “sovereign” Constitution the provision that the “final authority in theatre” is “the Head of the international military presence,” which in reality means it is the US. In 2006, Serbia’s new pro-US/NATO government also signed (Srbija Danas, 2016) a special agreement with NATO — of which the US is the undisputed leader—which was reconfirmed in 2016 by Kosovo’s new and even more pro-US/NATO government. This agreement gives unimpeded access and immunity to NATO troops on the supposedly sovereign territory of Serbia, and guarantees that the “authorities” of Serbia shall not detain NATO personnel. In 2003, Croatia and Slovenia “suffered” the loss of US military aid by not signing the agreement, in their attempt to please their Brussels EU overlords, but by being NATO members they fall under direct control by the US through NATO’s command structures and political architecture, and their own troops have gained immunity from prosecution, at least in Serbia. Thus, not a single thinking person in ex-Yugoslavia may be fooled into believing the high moral ground posturing by the US, UK, France etc. — all of whom are the principal powers behind the Tribunal’s crusade for justice.
Problems with ICTY being used as a Political Tool of the West
No one proclaimed it more publicly and with less worry about the consequences of his words than the US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke in his 2003 BBC radio interview “United Nations or Not?”: [ICTY is a] “huge valuable tool,” and “[Karadžić and Mladić, being indicted by the Hague,] [t]hey cannot participate in an international peace conference of any sort.” It must be pointed out that, at least according to a US history professor and a Balkans expert, Charles Ingrao, who states in the Deutsche Welle 2008 interview “Holbrooke promised Karadžić that he wouldn’t be arrested”, that the US State Department revealed that Ambassador Holbrooke used ICTY as a political bargaining chip. Ambassador Holbrooke totally disregarded the justice principle by “promising Karadžić freedom from arrest if he stepped down from office and disappeared,” allowing in this manner the more malleable Serbia’s president Milošević to be the official legal representative of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Serbs at the Dayton Peace Conference. Since then, many in the Balkans have commented that Milošević’s citizens suffered UN sanctions for years because the US claimed that he didn’t have the right to interfere in the affairs of the independent and sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, only to become, by the will of the US, the sole representative of one of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s ethnic groups at a major international conference concerned with the most crucial matter for that state — peace.
One of the most problematic matters with ICTY were its “sealed indictments,” (Stover, 2011, pp. 36-37) introduced by the Canadian judge, Louise Arbour, instituting uncertainty and fear in the political leaders in the Balkans, especially among the Serbs, for no one knew if one were walking into a trap, or into a meeting to negotiate with ex-Yugoslav adversaries and/or Western representatives. This psychological state of the Serbian politicians, who were the primary recipients of the negative stimuli (hunts, arrests, loss of dignity, office and property), developed the “gambling behavior” caused by the West’s variation in behavior reinforcement schedule, and award/punishment outcome of it—they never knew if they would end up in the Hague or be praised as peacemakers and partners. As the experiments with laboratory rats showed, the organism put on this “variable ration schedule” keeps repeating and maintaining over long stretches of time the behavior caused by even once experienced reward or punishment (especially the punishment), causing, in this case, the Serbian officials to respond to the West’s each and every stimulus, regardless of its nature, perpetuating the confusion by responding in the hope of eventually guessing correctly and getting an award instead of punishment.
Another ICTY Prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, made it very clear that the Tribunal was a political tool of the West when she stated that “the primary focus of the Office of the Prosecutor must be on the investigation and prosecution of the five leaders of the FRY and Serbia who have already been indicted” (Stover, 2011, pp. 36-37), but said not a word on ICTY’s plans to indict any of the Western leaders who were responsible for many a crime during NATO’s illegal bombing of Serbia in 1999, besides being guilty of the supreme offense — crime against the peace. Improvising a cover for the bombing clearly Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government In Kosovo was the objective of the failed conference, which took place at the summer residence of the presidents of the French republic at Rambouillet castle, near Paris, in February 1999, and which later served as a basis for the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244, expanding all the NATO-demanded immunities and privileges to the U.N. personnel in occupied Kosovo. Although the U.S. President Clinton, in his 1999 Remarks at the Legislative Convention of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees claimed that “Milosevic, on the other hand, […] refused even to discuss key elements of the agreement”, the highest official of the U.S. executive branch did not disclose the fact that the so-called negotiations were held in the most hostile manner towards the Serbs, and that the so-called peace agreement contained secret clauses that not only completely negated the sovereignty and freedom of Serbia if signed, but also set the stage for changing fundamentally the country’s property relations and the management of its resources and economy. It was an ultimatum[8] designed to be rejected so that a war could be started.
Another proof that the Tribunal was part of the well planned and executed US political plot are the words by the U.S. congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, as quoted in The Outlook for the Independence of Kosova, at the Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives:
“Just a reminder to the predominantly Muslim-led government[s] in this world that here is yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also by jihadists of all color and hue. The United States’ principles are universal, and in this instance, the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe.” (2007, p. 16)
During NATO’s destruction of Yugoslavia, its spokesperson, Jamie Shea, also made it very clear to the viewers of the May 1999 NATO press conference that ICTY was a political tool of the US and NATO:
“As you know, without NATO countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who support on a daily basis their activities. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law. We obviously recognise the jurisdiction of these tribunals, but I can assure you, when these tribunals look at Yugoslavia I think they will find themselves fully occupied with the far more obvious breaches of international law that have been committed by Belgrade than any hypothetical breaches that may have occurred by the NATO countries, and I expect that to apply to both. So that is our position on that, we recognise international law, in fact we recognise international law so much that when we see a massive violation of it, […], we don’t just shout about it, we do something to stop it because we uphold international law. The charge by Yugoslavia was brought under the genocide convention. That does not apply to NATO countries. As to whom it does apply, I think we know the answer there.”
Justice Louise Arbour finalized this conclusion during a joint press conference with the US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright in Washington, DC, on April 30, 1999, when she said:
“We have long-standing relationships with [NATO] information providers. We are now looking at trying to accelerate the flow of that kind of information and the quality of the product. […] It’s a dialogue and a partnership that we have to maintain. […] we have partners who have the political will and the operational skills to execute arrest warrants even in hostile environments. […] we’ve now put in place mechanisms that allow us, in partnership with many others who are in the field in Albania and in Macedonia, to try to process refugee accounts and, from our point of view, select those who will provide the best base for a court case.”
Problems with Rules of Procedure and Evidence at ICTY
Due to the lack of space, only the most serious and to the course of justice most damaging ICTY rules of procedure and evidence shall be listed and very briefly commented upon here.
The Tribunal adapted practices from different judicial traditions, but only as they suited its general purpose of achieving the West’s political goals, while disregarding all safeguards so valiantly fought for over many centuries in order to guarantee impartiality and trustworthiness of courts and the legal profession. The Hague shall be remembered for the most unprecedented and damaging mix of rules, of which even the infamous Spanish Inquisition or Stalinist courts couldn’t be accused. They include: amending the rules with disregard for their prejudice to the rights of the accused; rule amendments with the effect of ex post facto law; rules that may be amended by the chamber with no further discussion if the judges accept them unanimously; the Prosecutor may create his/her own rules but the Defense is not accorded a similar right; the Prosecution was declared an organ of the Tribunal which also has the right to propose amendments to the rules; the Prosecution may refuse access to evidence to the Defense and may present the reasons for such refusal to the judges without the Defense being present or having a right to challenge them; the Tribunal may prohibit the disclosure of the indictment, any documents or information to the Defense; admission of hearsay evidence; anonymous witness testimonies; allowing witnesses to refuse to appear in court and permanent concealment of his/her identity; expunging names and identifying information from the public record; closed hearings (which is basically a secret trial); no jury (which might have brought common sense into the courtroom); use of sealed indictments[9]; facts, documents and information may be concealed from the general public, especially if contrary to or affecting the interest of any state (one may suspect it is of the US and its vassals); detention of non-indicted suspects for up to 90 days, with no evidence required; allowing the arrest of a suspect who was already acquitted (and then allowing his detention for 90 days with no reason stated); allowing forced self-incrimination; presumption of “free and voluntary” confessions, even after such a long period of detention without indictments and evidence, with the prisoner having the burden of proof to the contrary; allowing for modification of the conditions of detention[10]; the Registrar having the right to disqualify any counsel almost arbitrarily, if counsel is regarded as “unfriendly” to the Tribunal; limiting the number of lawyers based on the claim that there already are too many representing a certain individual; the Tribunal allowed itself to be funded, staffed and assisted by private citizens, NGOs, corporations, military alliances and governments that had a direct stake in the results of the trials, all of which enjoyed practical immunity from the Tribunal.
As Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, a US citizen and an ITCY president, pointed out during his 1999 statement before the US Supreme Court:
“We benefited from the strong support of concerned governments and dedicated individuals such as Secretary Albright. As the permanent representative to the United Nations, she had worked with unceasing resolve to establish the Tribunal. Indeed, we often refer to her as the ‘mother of the Tribunal’.”
The Problem of Biased and Selective Indictments
In a civilized society, only difference in kind can warrant a difference in treatment. Today, we are experiencing plenty of concern by human rights groups and legal scholars in the US because of the disproportionate number of minorities in US prisons. A recent National Geographic magazine published an article “The Stop,” that starts with these powerful words: “Black motorists are pulled over by police at rates exceeding those for whites. It’s a flash point in the national debate over race, as many minorities see a troubling message: You don’t belong here.” (2018, p. 100) Yet, at the UN’s own tribunal, as published by ICTY’s November 2017 “Key Figures of the Cases”, there is little regard for the incredible disproportionality in the number of Serbs who were indicted, detained and sentenced, and/or died in the process compared to prisoners of other ethnic backgrounds. Even if such concerns were voiced by conscientious observers, they were dismissed by explanations that Serbs committed more crimes than others in ex-Yugoslavia. We wouldn’t even have to imagine the outrage, since that would be the most common result if such simplistic statements were offered as official explanation for the disproportionate numbers of detentions and incarcerations of minorities in the US.
Today, after ICTY has closed its doors, most Serbs, in addition to asking the question about their right as a nation “to belong here,” believe that a kind of nouveau demonization was used in the West’s discourse and dealings with the Balkans, and especially the Serbs, and that a pathological view of deviance was utilized to present 19th century quasi scientific ideas, disguised by the latest PR speech and spin as something modern and acceptable. The purpose was to establish a fundamental difference between the individuals and societies declared progressive, well-adjusted, stable and advanced[11], and those that are deemed backward, traditionally unstable, pathologically self-destructive and retarded. In the case of the Balkan peoples, and especially the Serbs, it wasn’t demons and angels that were pulled out in front of audiences, but the “doctored” theories of Darwin, Smith and many of the contemporary proponents of their ideas, which they carefully selected and often did not fully quote. Although this pathological perspective attempted to look modern and scientific, there was an underlying aspect of demonizing medievalism in it — in the end, the “others” were hurting “us” and had to be eliminated. It was highly moralistic, creating the categories of superior and inferior, although it appeared biologically deterministic, disguised as science, presenting evidence of pathology in the dysgenic heritage of the opponents, who were not only reduced to individuals who carry a disease in their very being (as quoted from Western media by Savich, 2000), but who were also not capable even of understanding the benefits of superior civilization. They thus had to be turned into an example, punished, and, if not eliminated, at least contained, controlled and reduced in numbers, and confined to a minimal territory where they will not interfere with progress and advancement of the human race. Such opinions came from top down since the 1990s, when then US Senator Biden (later US Vice President) declared the Serbs as “a bunch of illiterate degenerates, baby killers, butchers, and rapists,” as cited by Malić in “Biden does the Balkans” (2009).[12]
But it wasn’t just this racist approach to indictments which targeted Serbs that made even the ICTY-supporting Serbs outraged: some of the suspects seem to have been selected simply as a political payback to cooperative local officials for promoting Western interests in ex-Yugoslavia. The most blatant example might be the case of Dr. Vojislav Šešelj, who was indicted, according to ITCY’s Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, at the request of the then Prime Minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjić. As reported by the Belgrade daily Politika in 2008, in her book “The Hunt: Me and the War Criminals,” she claimed that Djindjić told her: “Take Šešelj away and don’t return him to us again.” [13] Dr. Šešelj actually surrendered to the Tribunal voluntarily and spent 11 ½ years there, only to be completely acquitted and released in 2014, returning to Serbia and ever since actively participating in the political life there, together with most of the other political leaders who were in charge of Serbia’s affairs during the hostilities the Hague was supposed to investigate and punish. (Yet, at the very finalization of this text, news came from The Hague that ITCY partially overturned the acquittal. It also, sentenced him to 10 years in prison, thus, according to many shocked legal scholars, acting beyond the traditional appellate court’s writ of not being able to pass a final sentence but only to rule on pounts of law in the lower court’s verdict. But, with ITCY, as with an unjust God, all things are possible.)
With such history, one may ask how many Serbian political leaders might have cut a deal with the Tribunal, or the US, in order to avoid being indicted, or not arrested due to a “sealed indictment”?
One of them might be the infamous writer and “master of Serbia’s public squares” in the 1990s, Vuk Drašković. Although he used more inflammatory language in his nationalistic and anti-Muslim speeches than Dr. Šešelj ever did, Drašković was never arrested and taken into custody, in spite of rumors of a “sealed indictment” against him. He even became foreign minister of Yugoslavia in 2004, after a regime change that overthrew Milošević. This writer remembers the proud bragging of a Bosnian Muslim interpreter during the Washington DC February 2004 Prayer Breakfast gatherings at the Hilton, telling her audience that Mr. Drašković was “worked over” by a representative of the US Institute for Peace in order to be ready for his government position the following month in Belgrade. During Drašković’s term of office, the infamous NATO-Serbia agreement was signed — many suspect in exchange for his freedom. Drašković shocked many in Serbia by his turnabout, transforming himself from a verbally murderous chauvinist into the greatest proponent of the West’s superiority and Serbian people’s genetic deficiencies and eternal guilt for the evils of the Yugoslav civil wars.
Another very interesting case is that of the French citizen and Foreign Legion caporal-chef, and later Croatian General, Ante Gotovina, who was indicted in 2001, and then promptly disappeared, only to be captured in Spain (in the Canary Islands, in 2005). Many Croats, especially the multitudes who fought for what they believed was the liberation of Croatia from Serbian occupation, were angered by the indictment of their national hero, and even more so by the Croatian government’s alleged collaboration in his capture, and believed that their government exchanged him for future membership in the EU and NATO. During his disappearance, General Gotovina was believed to be hiding in one of the many Roman Catholic monasteries in Croatia but this writer had an almost surreal experience during one of his trips to San Francisco, in the spring of 2006, when a young Mexican stopped him on the street and started crying, claiming that he looked like his “lover, the greatest hero of his people.” After a long and emotionally charged conversation with the youth, this writer learned that, according to this young man’s testimony, General Gotovina had lived with him, with the US authorities’ awareness of it, in a hotel in San Francisco, until he decided to go to the Canary Islands, in spite of his lover’s pleadings not to do so. If we accept the already mentioned ICTY ruling that the admission even of hearsay does not compromise the rights of the accused, this “lover’s testimony” would have had even more weight than hearsay since it would have come from a first-hand source.
To illustrate the Hague’s bias in selecting the individuals to be indicted for various crimes in the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, one only need quote the main Western leaders from the time of the so-called Kosovo War, starting with the first female US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who, during an NPR 2013 interview, admitted “what we did there was not legal.” In addition to this principal initiator of the attack on Serbia, as pointed out by Walter Isaacson in Time Magazine,[14] we may remember that in March 2014, Gerhard Schröder, German Chancellor at the time of the NATO-governments’ bombing of Serbia in 1999, as reported by TANJUG in 2014, said during a gathering organized by the weekly Die Zeit in Hamburg: “We sent our planes there… against Serbia, and together with NATO forces bombed a sovereign state, and at the same time there was no decision of the UN Security Council.” [15]
Even NATO itself, as an institution, in its Fact Sheet “Russia’s accusations – setting the record straight,” April 13, 2014, admitted officially that its “Operation Allied Force was launched despite the lack of Security Council authorization.”
Being acutely aware that they were committing serious violations of both international[16] and domestic laws and principles[17], and especially concerned about being accused of crime against peace[18], Western leaders made certain, from the beginning of the “war”, that there was no official declaration of war by any of the states involved in the aggression on Serbia. George Robertson, the UK Defense Secretary, being questioned in Parliament about the possibility of British casualties during the “war” against Yugoslavia, responded: “[The military experts he listened to] rightly warn that we cannot have a casualty-free war. This is not a war.” The Chairman, then, asked: “Having clarified their legal status, I presume there will be no formal declaration of war.” Mr. Robertson responded: “It is not a war.” The Chairman asked: “If a NATO pilot is shot down […] what under the Geneva Convention […] can [he] demand under international law?” Mr. Robertson, as his entire testimony was reported in the 1999 UK Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence, responded:
“The full protection of the Geneva Conventions. […] All parties to any conflict must be bound by the GC. […] This is not a war. We are not declaring war on Serbia. We are not bombing Serbia. We are damaging the military capability to destroy civilians in that part of the world.”
Yet, the Tribunal, in its pursuit of transitional justice, indicted not one of the Western leaders for any of the crimes ICTY was established to prosecute and punish. The peoples of ex-Yugoslavia certainly don’t seem disposed to forget that.
Problems with Deaths on the Way to The Hague and in its Custody
Hitler’s close associate, Göring, committed suicide in his cell at Nuremberg, after having been sentenced to death. Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia General Praljak did it even more flamboyantly by swallowing poison right there in the courtroom after rejecting his final guilty verdict. The most incredible part of this 2017 suicide by a war criminal is the fact that reportedly no genuine and necessary medications were could be brought in to President Milošević, due to strict security measures at ICTY, but a deadly poison somehow passed into the hands of a convicted war criminal so that he could perform a theatrical act in front of cameras and before the Tribunal and win eternal glory and sympathy in the hearts and minds of his compatriots and coreligionists in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
There is no need to remind anyone that President Milošević’s 2006 death was officially declared to be “a heart attack” and not murder, which it is widely believed that it was. It is necessary to point out also at least a few other deaths (mostly Serbs), either in ICTY’s custody, on the way there, or during their temporary release from ICTY (as many people suspect, only so that they wouldn’t die in custody): Slavko Dokmanović (in detention, June 1998); Simo Drljača (before his transfer to The Hague); a forensic pathologist, Dušan Dunjić, in a Hague hotel, just before his important testimony in the case of General Ratko Mladić; Dr. Milan Kovačević (1998); Milan Babić (2006); General Zdravko Tolimir (2016); Miroslav Deronjić (2007); General Mile Mrkšić (2017, in prison, in Portugal); Goran Hadžić, died in 2016 (while on temporary release), as well as Generals Djordje Djukić, in 1996, Momir Tarlać, in 2002, and Milan Gvero, in 2013.
Any institution charged with bringing people to justice, with such a death rate of suspects or sentenced prisoners, would come under extreme scrutiny. But not ICTY. Yet, it is one more element in generating the belief that the Hague Tribunal is synonymous with an incredible miscarriage of justice, especially in relation to the Serbs. That perception will not die as easily as the “international community” might wish it to happen.
Disparity in Acquittals and the Length of Sentences Based on Suspect and Convict Nationality and Religion
Having myself worked on evidence gathering for the Croat-Moslem run Čelebići camp case, I find it at the very least shocking, to put it mildly, how Zejnil Delalić, the 1992 Coordinator of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat forces in the Konjic area and Commander of the First Tactical Group of the Bosnian Army was acquitted because, as reported by The Hague Justice Portal, ICTY “Trial Chamber II found that he did not have command and control over the prison-camp and over the guards who worked there and, accordingly, determined that he could not be held criminally responsible for their actions,”[19] while almost the entire Serbian leadership was systematically found capable of command and control over every person who committed even the slightest infraction of the rules of war.[20]
More blatantly obvious bias is evident in the case of former Republic of Srpska President Biljana Plavšić’s genocide indictment, based on her statements regarding genetic shortcomings of the Moslems of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Black, The Guardian, 2001), while not one Western official was ever indicted for racist and warmongering speeches about Serbs. (Ravnagora, 2009)
ITCY’s own website provides shocking statistics regarding this disparity and impressive disability of the Tribunal to find evidence for the guilt of non-Serbs, while displaying almost magical capabilities to do so in cases involving Serbian suspects: 72 Serbs were sentenced to 1,138 years of prison, while Croats, Albanians and Bosnian Moslems together received a total of 361 years. Of those, only 20 Croats were found guilty, 5 Bosnian Moslems, and 1 Albanian. [21] Adding to this heavy burden of suspicion, one must remind the reader that many of the witnesses, who could have provided evidence for the criminality of the Albanian leaders, mysteriously committed suicides, died in accidents, or simply disappeared, allowing the Hague to declare the suspects free to return to politics and high office, and to retain newly-acquired titles of “their excellencies.”
The Problem of Perceived Racism as a Basis for the Establishment of the Tribunal
The fact that such ad hoc tribunals were created only for the Slavic and Albanian Eastern Europeans and Africans provided ample suspicion that the Western leaders were exercising their well-hidden racism, and permanent Russophobia, projected mostly onto the Serbs, as the closest thing to actual Russians, whom they still can’t put in the dock. The Balkan crisis provided them an opportunity to vent their frustrations, which they otherwise couldn’t express in today’s world of political correctness. This strong belief is not something that will be changed soon in the minds of the Balkan peoples.
Conclusions
In its fanatical and unscrupulous pursuit of a politically correct construct of Yugoslav events since 1991, ICTY distanced its historical reconstructive labors from the honest and honorable principle of the 19th century German historian Leopold von Ranke, whose tenet was that the discipline of history must find out “how things actually were.” That principle was followed by generations of conscientious investigators in the past.
ICTY’s approach to evidence and historical context caused even the side most favored by the US in the Yugoslav conflict — the Moslems of Bosnia and Kosovo — to experience moments and lengthy periods of dissatisfaction, disappointment and distress once even their heroes were indicted, arrested, and, in very rare instances, found guilty and sentenced by the Tribunal. Croats, the second most guilty ethnic group according to the number of sentenced war criminals, eventually turned completely against ITCY after it posthumously became known that their pater patriae, Dr. Franjo Tudjman, was under investigation for genocide — against Bosnian Moslems, to be sure, but not against Serbs. In the end, as time passed by and the world became more and more aware of horrific and countless crimes by the US and its vassals, from Libya to Pakistan, not one of the nationalities, ethnic groups, minorities or religious communities of Yugoslavia preserved even a semblance of guilt or regret for any actus reus committed in their name, since they learned that any death and destruction can be declared by the West as collateral damage and a byproduct of the fog of war, clearing the perpetrators of responsibility and even turning them into national heroes and bringers of freedom and democracy. Instead of remorse, what Americans have accomplished is mass conscience cleansing and guilt alleviation in the minds and hearts of the peoples of the Former Yugoslavia! Some collateral damage, one might say!
One might want also to be reminded of Article 16 of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 “Lieber Code”, especially considering the very likely possibility that ICTY was not part of a true global judicial machinery but of the West’s military and political/diplomatic apparatus. Article 16, regarding the rules of war, directs that:
“Military necessity does not admit of cruelty – that is, the infliction of suffering for the sake of suffering or for revenge […]. It admits of deception, but disclaims acts of perfidy; and, in general, military necessity does not include any act of hostility which makes the return to peace unnecessarily difficult.” (1898)
In this context, ICTY clearly failed the fulfillment of this nobly, if also politically motivated directive, especially its last part — it has actually made the return to true and lasting peace in former Yugoslavia unnecessarily difficult.
In the end — paraphrasing the famous and most noble wish of Lord Acton that someday there would be a history of Europe written in such a way that it would be impossible to guess the nationality of the contributors — a desire had been expressed that ICTY should pass judgments in such a way that the citizenship and political loyalty of ICTY justices would not prejudice them. Yet, US historian Anthony Grafton’s conclusion regarding the feasibility of Lord Acton’s aspiration could be paraphrased with equal potency: [such outcome will be possible] when the seas turn to lemonade.
Those who wish to risk salt-water-consumption-induced-madness may partake in ICTY’s judicial lemonade and keep on believing that The Hague brought lasting peace rather than seeds of future wars to the Balkans.
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Endnotes:
[1] “Injustice is the seed of future wars” – Carla Del Ponte, ICTY Prosecutor; Politika; Belgrade, Serbia; May 1-2, 2008; p. 33.
[2] Njegoš, Petar Petrović; The Mountain Wreath; Izdavačko preduzeće “Rad”; Belgrade, Serbia; 1997; page 165.
[3] Here it is important to point out the curious date after which the Tribunal was given the authority to prosecute crimes—there was plenty of evidence of a variety of physical crimes against Serbs and their property in Croatia, and administrative genocidal crimes against Serbs in Macedonia (for example: this author’s father had his surname “Macedonized” on his birth certificate, and most Serbs in Macedonia experienced the same fate, and Serbs were denied the very existence officially by the Skoplje government). Not one of those crimes was taken into consideration as a cause for the buildup of inter-ethnic tensions in Yugoslavia, but a literary work from almost two centuries ago was cited as such by ICTY.
[4] Judgment of the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, October 1946; Yale Law School; Lillian Goldman Law Library; The Avalon Project.
[5] As Madeleine Albright famously declared the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s preliminary estimate of 567,000 deaths of Iraqi children an acceptable sacrifice in order to enforce sanctions on the Iraqi regime: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price-we think the price is worth it.” – 60 Minutes TV show with Lesley Stahl; CBS News; May 12, 1996; FAIR website.
[6] This male-dominant characterization is not only politically incorrect but factually inappropriate too—many of the most radical and ruthlessly militant Western leaders were female.
[7] ibid.; Sect. 23.
[8] Not even a year later, U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s assistant Jonathan Levitsky proudly stated to the author of this text (at the U.S. mission to the U.N.) that he was “the author of the Rambouillet Accord”, and that he “used the 1914 Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia as a blueprint” for it, so that the Serbs would not sign it and thus provide an opening for the bombing by NATO.
[9] A study of Bosnian judges revealed that the Moslem judges “generally found the sealed indictments acceptable,” reasoning that “because Bosnia was ‘totally undemocratic’” such practice was OK. – International Law and Society: Empirical Approaches to Human Rights; edited by Laura A. Dickinson; Chapter 7; Justice, Accountability and Social Reconstruction: An Interview Study of Bosnian Judges and Prosecutors, by The Human Rights Center and the International Human Rights Law Clinic, University of California, Berkeley, and the Centre for Human Rights, University of Sarajevo; Routledge; 2017.
[10] Serbs were generally denied this even for medical life-threatening reasons while, for example, a Croatian general Tihomir Blaškić was allowed to await trial in a private villa.
[11] The author’s personal experience is a testimony to this search for the stigmata of the Serbian pathological atavist within: An American journalist, who, in 1992, interviewed the author together with a visiting Croatian journalist, could not, as she said, suppress her surprise upon realizing that the white-skinned, blue-eyed, English speaking individual before her, who was shaved and wore a suit and a tie, was a Serb, while the dark-skinned, black-eyed, bearded, and non-English-speaking one was a Croat. She expressed such sub-conscious racist impressions even in the published text of the interview. See: Purdy, Penelope; Tales of anguish revealed in soft voices; The Denver Post; June 28, 1992.
[12] https://original.antiwar.com/malic/2009/05/19/biden-does-the-balkans/
[13] Politika, 14 April 2008, http://www.politika.rs/sr/clanak/39448/Dindic-Vodi-Seselja-i-nemoj-vise-da-nam-ga-vracas
[14] “Madeleine’s war,” Time Magazine, May 10, 1999, http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/time/1999/05/10/albright.html
[15] Reported by Telegraf.rs, 9 March 2014, http://www.telegraf.rs/vesti/981087-gerhard-sreder-priznao-da-je-nato-nelegalno-bombardovao-srbiju ; see also B92, 10 March 2014, “International law was broken when Serbia was attacked: Gerhard Schroeder has admitted that “like the situation in Crimea,” the NATO attack on Serbia in 1999 was also a violation of international law,” https://www.b92.net/eng/news/world.php?yyyy=2014&mm=03&dd=10&nav_id=89568
[16] Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States; Article 11; Montevideo, Uruguay; December 26, 1933.
[17] The U.N. General Assembly Resolution 2131 (XX); Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty.
[18] The Nuremberg Final Declaration; 1946: “To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
[19] http://www.haguejusticeportal.net/index.php?id=6112
[20] For details of Delalić aquital, see ICTY Trial Judgment, 16 November 1998, http://www.icty.org/x/file/Legal%20Library/jud_supplement/supp1-e/celebici.htm
[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_the_former_Yugoslavia