* Una vacanza all'Aia? (W. Dorich)
* Karadzic e Mladic "farebbero meglio ad arrendersi, senno' faranno la
fine di Arkan": parola del portavoce del Tribunale dell'Aia!
* Link ad altri articoli in lingua inglese sul mancato intervento del
Tribunale "ad hoc" dell'Aia per i crimini della NATO sul territorio
jugoslavo
---
Source: http://www.serbianna.com/dorich/stories/00_05_10.html
May 2000
The Tribunal...A Holiday at The Hague?
by William Dorich
The article in the Washington Times entitled, ''War-crimes Defendants
Get a Gentle Touch'' by Betsy Pisik (May 7,
2000), gave the impression that Serbian defendants, who have a view of
the North Sea from their prison windows is
luxurious compensation for denying these defendants due process. For
decades prisoners at Alcatraz, renowned as one of
the severest penal institutions in this country, had magnificent views
of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, so
what is Ms. Pasik's point?
I was particularly struck that her article centered on the interior
appointments of this prison rather than the abhorrent
violations of the rights of these individuals. I am certain they don't
care about the ''weight-lifting facilities, jogging
track and well-appointed kitchen,'' they are too worried about being
tried by judges from Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia
and China where human rights violations resemble the Middle Ages, or
worse, the Inquisition.
Shockingly absent from this article is any mention that this tribunal
has omitted any judge whose homeland contains a
sizable Orthodox Christian population (The Serbs are Orthodox
Christians), while Roman Catholic and Islamic presence
on the tribunal is abundant. Can anyone imagine the outcry if the O.J.
Simpson jury had not a single black? Over 700
Roman Catholic priests participated in the fascist Ustashi units in WWII
and personally liquidated tens of thousands of
Serbs, Jews and Roma in Yugoslavia then fled to Argentina to escape
justice. For this reason alone Roman Catholic
jurists should be excluded from any of these proceedings as being
prejudicial.
The first militant military unit in Bosnia, the ''Mosque Doves,''
contained imams, the prayer leaders of mosques. These
religious clerics are believed to be divinely appointed, sinless,
infallible successors of Muhammad. According to the
Sarajevo newspaper Ljiljan on November 29, 1993, the young mufti of
Tuzla, Hussein Kavazovic bragged that he had ''15
imams under his command.''
There are numerous countries without Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic
or Muslim citizens like Norway, Sweden,
Finland and Switzerland yet they are not represented on this court.
Consumed by the thought that these defendants
actually have ''cable television,'' Ms. Pisik ignored the court's
guidelines that permit appeals by prosecutors and
provisions that defendants are liable to 'double jeopardy' which makes
this nothing more than a Kangaroo court that
violates the most basic aspects of the American judicial system.
Senior American prosecutor Minna Schrag, briefly on loan to The Hague
from a New York law firm, told international
law scholars in a speech in March of 1995 at the University of Virginia
Law School, ''It was a novel experience to be
deciding precedent on rules of evidence and procedure during impromptu
conversations in hallways at the Yugoslav
tribunal.'' What arrogant contempt for the legal process.
In an article in the Nation entitled ''Time to Watch the Watchers'' on
September 26, 1994, C. Douglas Lummis,
copresident of the Paficic-Asia Resource Center and instructor of
political philosophy at Tsuda College in Tokyo wrote,
''The tribunal itself is making the law and... the document will not
have to be submitted to any other UN organ for
approval. They write it, and it's law. Just like that.'' Perhaps Ms.
Pisik supports this kind of Orwellian justice, too brave
for a world of sovereign states?
The scant 10 rules of procedure and evidence at Nuremberg have been
replace with 130 in this
'make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along' tribunal, including denying the
defendants the right to face their accusers who
testify from behind screens to protect their identity... an insulting
form of justice that reeks of Klu Klux Klan tactics.
The use of ''secret'' indictments is another hideous abuse of
respectable legal jurisprudence that will no doubt to be used
against the entire Serb population for decades to come, especially when
the West wants to maneuver someone from
political office. ''Justice'' kept from the prying eyes of the world's
legal scholars and perceived not to be fair will breed
more revenge and hatred in the Balkans, just opposite of Albright's
intentions.
Professor Lummis and Dutch scholar Peter Baehr insists that Chapter 7
authorizes the United Nations to deploy the
armed forces of member state in peacekeeping operations, period!
''Stretch the words as you will,'' wrote Lummis, ''you
cannot make them say that the UN has the power to put people in jail
under criminal charges.''
In one instance, the tribunal's 'most wanted list' contained the Serb
name ''Grba'' allegedly given to Newsday journalist
and Pulitzer recipient, Roy Gutman in a Sarajevo bar. As the alleged
story goes Gutman in turn gave the information to
tribunal investigators. Grba turned out to be a fictitious character
from the Serbian novel, Man on a Donkey. Apparently
some Serb in Bosnia got a good laugh at Gutman's expense. But this also
exposes the hideous lack of legal investigation by
this tribunal and the eagerness to arrest any Serb under any pretext.
During the Tadic trial, the main prosecution witness recanted his
testimony and admitted that he was trained by Muslim
officials to lie on the witness stand. In every democratic country in
the world this case would have been thrown out of
court. But not at this tribunal where the judges assured one another
they could disregard a week of testimony from this
liar and continued the trial. This is Orwellian justice the Washington
Times now praises as some sort of 'country club'
for defendants. But the Bosnian court system created by the United
States is no better. In one infamous case in 1993 a Serb
was sentenced to death for killing two Muslim brothers. When they showed
up alive and well a year later the Serb was
denied a new trial on the remaining charges and his sentence was reduced
to life in prison. This absurd case should be called
''One-strike you're out.''
Two Serb suspects were held at The Hague for four months and were
released of all charges due to false identity. No
compensation was given for their legal expenses, for destroying their
reputations or for being falsely arrested. If
Madeleine Albright gets her way an international court will be given the
power to arrest and prosecute American citizens
in this sleazy fashion. If the use of secret indictments, secret
witnesses and lawyers making new laws during impromptu
conversations in hallways is good enough for Serb defendants then it
better be good enough for American defendants as
this international court will supersede the American Constitution. What
Americans have fought and died defending
won't be worth the paper this Constitution was written on.
This outrageous abuse of the legal system began when Hungarian
billionaire George Soros gave De Paul University in
Chicago a million dollars to ''gather evidence of Serbian war crimes,''
as he arrogantly called his prejudicial donation.
This same billionaire gave nothing to the Serbs to collect evidence of
war crimes committed against them. I have nothing
but contempt for his ''open society'' ideas that appear no different
than the Communist system where defendants are also
denied the necessary funds to defend themselves.
A war crimes database was gathered at De Paul University under the
supervision of Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, an
Egyptian-born Muslim specialist in international law who became the head
of the Commission of Experts at the UN. A
prodigious author of books and essays on Islam and the Palestine
Liberation Organization, Bassiouni's office walls at De
Paul displayed quotes from the Koran. Twice the Serbs tried to present
evidence of crimes committed against the Serbs in
Croatia in 1991 and twice this evidence was ''misplaced'' according to
Bassiouni who accepted one package of evidence
directly from Dr. Milan Bulajic an eminent Serb authority and author of
the book, The Principles of International Law
and Development. Dr. Bulajic is a Serbian attorney considered an expert
on genocide by the United Nations.
Bassiouni amassed 65,000 documents that when finally submitted to the
United Nations did not contain any Serbian
evidence. According to AP on April 24, 1994, Bassiouni claimed, ''our
lawyers and analysts put together this report and
quite obviously, we did not have the resources in order to obtain
first-hand information.'' In other words, Serbs were
being condemned with collective guilt with the use of hearsay and
secondhand witness accounts. As of May 1, 2000
defense attorneys at the tribunal are being limited to less than 200
hours on behalf of any one defendant. Meanwhile the
prosecution has a lavish budget and all the time and experts they need.
I wonder how the 'Dream Team' would have
reacted if they were given only 200 hours to defend O.J. Simpson?
Ms. Pisik mentions in her article that Milan Kovacevic, an
Anesthesiologist died in his cell after suffering an aneurysm.
As a medical doctor Kovacevic surely knew the danger he was in but his
guards denied his request for medical assistance
for several hours. Ms. Pisik's claim that ''he died after emergency
medical treatment'' is a shocking manipulation of the
truth.
A unique aspect of this tribunal is the introduction of rape for the
first time as a war crime. However, Patricia Sellers,
the tribunal's legal adviser for sexual assault cases, continues to
pretend not to notice the mound of evidence presented to
the tribunal three years ago by Dr. Ljubica Toholj, director of the
Yugoslav Commission on War Crimes and Professor of
Gynecology at the University of Belgrade. She examined several thousand
Serbian POWs who were sexually mutilated by
forced circumcision as a form of torture which included dozens of
castrations rendering these Serbian men sexually
dysfunctional for life. Broom handles were forced into the anuses of
many Serb POWs which did severe damage to
internal organs that will shorten the life span of many of these
victims. The tribunal has not indicted a single perpetrator
of these ''sex crimes'' in spite of evidence naming numerous
perpetrators.
Betsy Pisik's article mocks the dignity of these Serbian POWs and
defendants and denies them 'Equal Justice Under the
Law' as inscribed over the doorway of the United States Supreme Court.
No amount of cable television and scenic views
can replace the violation of their human and legal rights. Future
generations will look back at this tribunal as just another
western lynch mob.
---
-----Original Message-----
From: Servisch Informatie- en Cultuurcentrum <Grbic@...>
To: news@... <news@...>
Date: Monday, April 03, 2000 10:05 PM
Subject: Radovan K.aradzic, Ratko Mladic "hunted down, like Arkan"
TILBURG / HAG, 3 april 2000 /SSICC/ - Today, the spokesman of the Hague
Tribunal for War Crimes in the former SFRYu P. Wesley said that Radovan
Karadzic and Ratko Mladic would be better off personally if they
surrendered. Otherwise, they will be "hunted down, like Arkan", which
means
that anybody might kill them without being prosecuted for that. This is
the
first public revelation that Zeljko Raznatovic has been "sentenced to
death".
Jovan Grbic,
Serbian Information and Cultural Centre, Tilburg, Netherlands
---
ALTRI ARTICOLI
-
JUGOSLAVIA UN ANNO DOPO:
CHIUDERE UN OCCHIO SUI CRIMINI DELLA NATO
http://www.counterpunch.org
CounterPunch
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair
May 22, 2000
Yugoslavia A Year Later
Turning a Blind Eye to NATO War Crimes
-
IL "PONZIO PILATO" DELLA NATO
http://www.iethical.org/iea/writing13.htm
NATO'S PONTIUS PILATE
By Jerry Zeifman
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------
* Karadzic e Mladic "farebbero meglio ad arrendersi, senno' faranno la
fine di Arkan": parola del portavoce del Tribunale dell'Aia!
* Link ad altri articoli in lingua inglese sul mancato intervento del
Tribunale "ad hoc" dell'Aia per i crimini della NATO sul territorio
jugoslavo
---
Source: http://www.serbianna.com/dorich/stories/00_05_10.html
May 2000
The Tribunal...A Holiday at The Hague?
by William Dorich
The article in the Washington Times entitled, ''War-crimes Defendants
Get a Gentle Touch'' by Betsy Pisik (May 7,
2000), gave the impression that Serbian defendants, who have a view of
the North Sea from their prison windows is
luxurious compensation for denying these defendants due process. For
decades prisoners at Alcatraz, renowned as one of
the severest penal institutions in this country, had magnificent views
of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, so
what is Ms. Pasik's point?
I was particularly struck that her article centered on the interior
appointments of this prison rather than the abhorrent
violations of the rights of these individuals. I am certain they don't
care about the ''weight-lifting facilities, jogging
track and well-appointed kitchen,'' they are too worried about being
tried by judges from Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia
and China where human rights violations resemble the Middle Ages, or
worse, the Inquisition.
Shockingly absent from this article is any mention that this tribunal
has omitted any judge whose homeland contains a
sizable Orthodox Christian population (The Serbs are Orthodox
Christians), while Roman Catholic and Islamic presence
on the tribunal is abundant. Can anyone imagine the outcry if the O.J.
Simpson jury had not a single black? Over 700
Roman Catholic priests participated in the fascist Ustashi units in WWII
and personally liquidated tens of thousands of
Serbs, Jews and Roma in Yugoslavia then fled to Argentina to escape
justice. For this reason alone Roman Catholic
jurists should be excluded from any of these proceedings as being
prejudicial.
The first militant military unit in Bosnia, the ''Mosque Doves,''
contained imams, the prayer leaders of mosques. These
religious clerics are believed to be divinely appointed, sinless,
infallible successors of Muhammad. According to the
Sarajevo newspaper Ljiljan on November 29, 1993, the young mufti of
Tuzla, Hussein Kavazovic bragged that he had ''15
imams under his command.''
There are numerous countries without Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic
or Muslim citizens like Norway, Sweden,
Finland and Switzerland yet they are not represented on this court.
Consumed by the thought that these defendants
actually have ''cable television,'' Ms. Pisik ignored the court's
guidelines that permit appeals by prosecutors and
provisions that defendants are liable to 'double jeopardy' which makes
this nothing more than a Kangaroo court that
violates the most basic aspects of the American judicial system.
Senior American prosecutor Minna Schrag, briefly on loan to The Hague
from a New York law firm, told international
law scholars in a speech in March of 1995 at the University of Virginia
Law School, ''It was a novel experience to be
deciding precedent on rules of evidence and procedure during impromptu
conversations in hallways at the Yugoslav
tribunal.'' What arrogant contempt for the legal process.
In an article in the Nation entitled ''Time to Watch the Watchers'' on
September 26, 1994, C. Douglas Lummis,
copresident of the Paficic-Asia Resource Center and instructor of
political philosophy at Tsuda College in Tokyo wrote,
''The tribunal itself is making the law and... the document will not
have to be submitted to any other UN organ for
approval. They write it, and it's law. Just like that.'' Perhaps Ms.
Pisik supports this kind of Orwellian justice, too brave
for a world of sovereign states?
The scant 10 rules of procedure and evidence at Nuremberg have been
replace with 130 in this
'make-up-the-rules-as-you-go-along' tribunal, including denying the
defendants the right to face their accusers who
testify from behind screens to protect their identity... an insulting
form of justice that reeks of Klu Klux Klan tactics.
The use of ''secret'' indictments is another hideous abuse of
respectable legal jurisprudence that will no doubt to be used
against the entire Serb population for decades to come, especially when
the West wants to maneuver someone from
political office. ''Justice'' kept from the prying eyes of the world's
legal scholars and perceived not to be fair will breed
more revenge and hatred in the Balkans, just opposite of Albright's
intentions.
Professor Lummis and Dutch scholar Peter Baehr insists that Chapter 7
authorizes the United Nations to deploy the
armed forces of member state in peacekeeping operations, period!
''Stretch the words as you will,'' wrote Lummis, ''you
cannot make them say that the UN has the power to put people in jail
under criminal charges.''
In one instance, the tribunal's 'most wanted list' contained the Serb
name ''Grba'' allegedly given to Newsday journalist
and Pulitzer recipient, Roy Gutman in a Sarajevo bar. As the alleged
story goes Gutman in turn gave the information to
tribunal investigators. Grba turned out to be a fictitious character
from the Serbian novel, Man on a Donkey. Apparently
some Serb in Bosnia got a good laugh at Gutman's expense. But this also
exposes the hideous lack of legal investigation by
this tribunal and the eagerness to arrest any Serb under any pretext.
During the Tadic trial, the main prosecution witness recanted his
testimony and admitted that he was trained by Muslim
officials to lie on the witness stand. In every democratic country in
the world this case would have been thrown out of
court. But not at this tribunal where the judges assured one another
they could disregard a week of testimony from this
liar and continued the trial. This is Orwellian justice the Washington
Times now praises as some sort of 'country club'
for defendants. But the Bosnian court system created by the United
States is no better. In one infamous case in 1993 a Serb
was sentenced to death for killing two Muslim brothers. When they showed
up alive and well a year later the Serb was
denied a new trial on the remaining charges and his sentence was reduced
to life in prison. This absurd case should be called
''One-strike you're out.''
Two Serb suspects were held at The Hague for four months and were
released of all charges due to false identity. No
compensation was given for their legal expenses, for destroying their
reputations or for being falsely arrested. If
Madeleine Albright gets her way an international court will be given the
power to arrest and prosecute American citizens
in this sleazy fashion. If the use of secret indictments, secret
witnesses and lawyers making new laws during impromptu
conversations in hallways is good enough for Serb defendants then it
better be good enough for American defendants as
this international court will supersede the American Constitution. What
Americans have fought and died defending
won't be worth the paper this Constitution was written on.
This outrageous abuse of the legal system began when Hungarian
billionaire George Soros gave De Paul University in
Chicago a million dollars to ''gather evidence of Serbian war crimes,''
as he arrogantly called his prejudicial donation.
This same billionaire gave nothing to the Serbs to collect evidence of
war crimes committed against them. I have nothing
but contempt for his ''open society'' ideas that appear no different
than the Communist system where defendants are also
denied the necessary funds to defend themselves.
A war crimes database was gathered at De Paul University under the
supervision of Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, an
Egyptian-born Muslim specialist in international law who became the head
of the Commission of Experts at the UN. A
prodigious author of books and essays on Islam and the Palestine
Liberation Organization, Bassiouni's office walls at De
Paul displayed quotes from the Koran. Twice the Serbs tried to present
evidence of crimes committed against the Serbs in
Croatia in 1991 and twice this evidence was ''misplaced'' according to
Bassiouni who accepted one package of evidence
directly from Dr. Milan Bulajic an eminent Serb authority and author of
the book, The Principles of International Law
and Development. Dr. Bulajic is a Serbian attorney considered an expert
on genocide by the United Nations.
Bassiouni amassed 65,000 documents that when finally submitted to the
United Nations did not contain any Serbian
evidence. According to AP on April 24, 1994, Bassiouni claimed, ''our
lawyers and analysts put together this report and
quite obviously, we did not have the resources in order to obtain
first-hand information.'' In other words, Serbs were
being condemned with collective guilt with the use of hearsay and
secondhand witness accounts. As of May 1, 2000
defense attorneys at the tribunal are being limited to less than 200
hours on behalf of any one defendant. Meanwhile the
prosecution has a lavish budget and all the time and experts they need.
I wonder how the 'Dream Team' would have
reacted if they were given only 200 hours to defend O.J. Simpson?
Ms. Pisik mentions in her article that Milan Kovacevic, an
Anesthesiologist died in his cell after suffering an aneurysm.
As a medical doctor Kovacevic surely knew the danger he was in but his
guards denied his request for medical assistance
for several hours. Ms. Pisik's claim that ''he died after emergency
medical treatment'' is a shocking manipulation of the
truth.
A unique aspect of this tribunal is the introduction of rape for the
first time as a war crime. However, Patricia Sellers,
the tribunal's legal adviser for sexual assault cases, continues to
pretend not to notice the mound of evidence presented to
the tribunal three years ago by Dr. Ljubica Toholj, director of the
Yugoslav Commission on War Crimes and Professor of
Gynecology at the University of Belgrade. She examined several thousand
Serbian POWs who were sexually mutilated by
forced circumcision as a form of torture which included dozens of
castrations rendering these Serbian men sexually
dysfunctional for life. Broom handles were forced into the anuses of
many Serb POWs which did severe damage to
internal organs that will shorten the life span of many of these
victims. The tribunal has not indicted a single perpetrator
of these ''sex crimes'' in spite of evidence naming numerous
perpetrators.
Betsy Pisik's article mocks the dignity of these Serbian POWs and
defendants and denies them 'Equal Justice Under the
Law' as inscribed over the doorway of the United States Supreme Court.
No amount of cable television and scenic views
can replace the violation of their human and legal rights. Future
generations will look back at this tribunal as just another
western lynch mob.
---
-----Original Message-----
From: Servisch Informatie- en Cultuurcentrum <Grbic@...>
To: news@... <news@...>
Date: Monday, April 03, 2000 10:05 PM
Subject: Radovan K.aradzic, Ratko Mladic "hunted down, like Arkan"
TILBURG / HAG, 3 april 2000 /SSICC/ - Today, the spokesman of the Hague
Tribunal for War Crimes in the former SFRYu P. Wesley said that Radovan
Karadzic and Ratko Mladic would be better off personally if they
surrendered. Otherwise, they will be "hunted down, like Arkan", which
means
that anybody might kill them without being prosecuted for that. This is
the
first public revelation that Zeljko Raznatovic has been "sentenced to
death".
Jovan Grbic,
Serbian Information and Cultural Centre, Tilburg, Netherlands
---
ALTRI ARTICOLI
-
JUGOSLAVIA UN ANNO DOPO:
CHIUDERE UN OCCHIO SUI CRIMINI DELLA NATO
http://www.counterpunch.org
CounterPunch
Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair
May 22, 2000
Yugoslavia A Year Later
Turning a Blind Eye to NATO War Crimes
-
IL "PONZIO PILATO" DELLA NATO
http://www.iethical.org/iea/writing13.htm
NATO'S PONTIUS PILATE
By Jerry Zeifman
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
http://www.egroups.com/group/crj-mailinglist/
------------------------------------------------------------