THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL AND THE FUTURE OF SERBIA
Vladimir Krsljanin, Sloboda/Freedom Association, Belgrade
(writen: May 2003 / updated and translated from Serbian: October 2003)
George Soros, one of the main sponsors of The Hague Tribunal and of the
currently ruling clique in Serbia, received with the full honours paid
to him by this clique, demanded recently on theSerbian soil the
“independence for Kosovo”. An international conference on Bosnia &
Herzegovina is being prepared, supposedly to abolish RepublikaSrpska.
What would be the “legal basis” of such acts? “Organized expulsion of
the Albanians” from Kosovo & Metohija, as well as “genocide that
founded” Republika Srpska. Who creates this "legal basis"? The Hague
Tribunal.
- If you knew what you don’t know, would it be in favour or to the
detriment of the Accused?
- Certainly, it would be to his detriment.
Approximately thus ran the dialogue between the Prosecutor and a
certain de la Brosse who had accepted, although he doesn’t speak a word
of Serbian, to appear before the Tribunal as an expert witness, i.e. an
expert on the media in Serbia and in the SlobodanMilosevic trial, no
less. If an institution of that class is allowed to judge our modern
history without being resisted in an organized manner, we are to lose
our state, billions of dollars and any respect from others, as well as
the right to consider ourselves a civilized nation.
Just on its inglorious tenth anniversary, the Tribunal took another
Serbian life – that of General Momir Talic.Earlier on, The Hague
detention had accelerated the endof Slavko Dokmanovic, Dr Milan
Kovacevic, General Djordje Djukic. Simo Drljaca and Dragan Gagovic were
killed while being arrested, and Vlajko Stojiljkovic committed suicide
in protest.
The reminder of the inglorious balance of the «first ten years» of the
Tribunal is the following: 45 indictments have been brought in against
the Serbs, 12 against the Croats, 5 against the Muslims, one against
the Albanians, andnone against the Americans and their NATO allies.
Among those sentenced were 13 Serbs, fourCroats and three Muslims.
Three Croats and two Muslims were acquitted. These statistics alone
speak of bias and the political character of the Tribunal.
1. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IS ILLEGAL
Experts from 87 countries, including Professor Smilja Avramov,
participated at a meeting organized by the UN on the eve of the
adoption of the Statute, or rather before the formal establishingof the
Tribunal. None of these experts have pronounced themselves in favour of
this new creation.Nevertheless, the Security Council Resolution No. 827
was adopted unanimously on 25 May 1993.The motion to adopt this
Resolution was tabled by France. Russia was also among the authors of
the Draft Resolution. The “original idea” to establish an international
criminal court based upon the Chapter VII of the UN Charter, rather
than upon a treaty, is believed to belong to the former UN
Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Even the establishing of the
Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals had been based upon treaties. In this
case, the law was overridden by a political argument – that such a
procedure would take too much time. Article 24 of the UN Charter
assigns the Security Council “primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security”, while Articles 41 and
42 (of Chapter VII) enable it to impose sanctions against
countries. However, the only crime outside the Tribunal’s jurisdiction
is the very crime against peace, and the Tribunal itself doesn’t try
states at all, but only individuals. The establishing of the Tribunal
draws upon theArticle 29, which stipulates the right of the Security
Council to establish “subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the
performance of its functions”. However, since the Security Council has
no judicial function (within the UN system only the International Court
of Justice does), it cannot be delegated to a subsidiary organ,
either.
The Tribunal conducts trials involving acts of grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Most of them relate to
international conflicts. However, temporal jurisdiction of the Tribunal
was assumed on 1 January 1991, namely seven months prior to the
unilateral secession or rather the declaration of independence of
Slovenia and Croatia (and two and a half years prior to the
establishing of the Tribunal itself). Thus the retroactive application
of the principles of criminal lawis being introduced, a deviation from
the generally accepted.This is because the Tribunal in practice either
treats all conflicts as international without proving it, or imposes
the application of international norms on conflicts other than
international as well. However, this can relate only to the application
of these norms by national courts. (N.A. Zverev: Prestupleniya i
nakazaniya, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 maya 2003g).
The exemption of natural persons from a national
jurisdiction is possible only if a state has committed an international
crime (something which has not been determined by the International
Court of Justice, and which is beyond the competence of The Hague
Tribunal to determine), or if a state voluntarily agrees to it, by
entering into a treaty.Moreover, The Hague Tribunal has only recently
started to shyly accept the right of any state to put its citizens on
trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
When ad hoc tribunals are concerned, the absence of
universality or rather of equality as one of the basic legal principles
is contrary to the principle of sovereign equality of states as well.At
the last Security Council session discussing the work of The Hague
Tribunal, held in November last year, which was closed to the public,
the representative of Russia pointed out the illogical situation of the
simultaneous existence of both the International Criminal Court (whose
Statute has not been ratified by Russia either, by the way) and the ad
hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda (the lack of the permanent
International Criminal Court had been one of the key arguments for
their establishing). In his words, the way out of this situation might
be sought in the fact that all the states of the former Yugoslavia have
ratified the Statute of the International Criminal Court.Unfortunately,
this clear diplomatic signal found no response from the Belgrade
authorities.
In the situation when nobody has yet initiated the procedure
for providing an advisory opinion from the International Court of
Justice on the legality of the decision to establish the Tribunal, the
unofficial judgement was passed by Professor Mohammed Bedjaoui, former
President of the International Court of Justice, in his book “The New
World Order and the Security Council: Testing the Legality of Its
Acts”, by including the Resolution No. 827 and the one that preceded
it, No. 808, among those legally most contentious and the first that
should be subject to test.
As a result, the Resolutions No. 808 and 827 do not create
legally binding obligations, particularly in view of the Article 25 of
the UN Charter, which explicitly states: “The Members of the UN agree
to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in
accordance with the present Charter”. By its advisory opinion of 21
June 1971, the International Court of Justice also confirmed that the
Member States are not obligated to carry out the Security Council
decisions that are not in accordance with the Charter.
2. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IS A POLITICAL COURT
The statements from the former Prosecutor Louise Arbour, US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (“mother of the Tribunal”), NATO
spokesman Jamie Shea and others, testify tothe direct dependence of the
Tribunal on the US Administration and the NATO Alliance. At the time of
the kidnapping of President Milosevic, the conspicuous link to the NATO
Alliance web sitedisappeared from the Tribunal’s homepage, and that was
the only other link there, in addition to the link to the UN website.
The Tribunal that should be independent from all governments
shows unacceptable bias also in its financing, to which the Government
of Saudi Arabia and George Soros contributed or still contribute, in
addition to large sums from the UN budget, as well as in recruiting its
personnel from the intelligence services of the countries that waged
the war against Yugoslavia.
The Indictment against President Milosevic and other highest
officials of Serbia and the FRY was initiated in the midst of NATO
aggression upon our country. There are many examples of a direct
connection between the work of the Tribunal and political
circumstances. Thefirst Indictment against Karadzic and Mladic was
initiated immediately after the attack on Srebrenica had begun, and the
second one after NATO bombardment of the Republika Srpska. The
Indictments against Slobodan Milosevic covering Croatia and B&H were
initiated only after the Tribunal had taken hold of him. The liability
of individuals for the crimes against the international law cannot be
separated from the liability of states for these crimes. However, The
Hague Tribunal conducts trials of individuals, while the liability of
states is not determined.
On the other hand, the Tribunal’s Prosecution dismissed the
motion to indict NATO leaders for war crimes committed during the
aggression upon Yugoslavia, by appointing as thepresenterthe former
legal adviser to the Ministry of Defence of Canada.Naturally,
thepresenterconcluded there was no probable cause to initiate
investigation.
The position of the US Administration on the jurisdiction of
international courts over its own citizens can be instructive to us as
well, at least to such an extent that one of the methods of ourdefence
against biased Tribunal might be to initiate as many proceedings as
possible against the US citizens whose liability for the war crimes in
Yugoslavia is undeniable.
3. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL MASSIVELY VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms, as well as the practice of the European Court of
Human Rights lay down the standards in the area of the judiciary, from
which the rules and practice of The Hague Tribunalundoubtedly and
drastically deviate. Unfortunately, and unfortunately not by accident,
the situation with human rights in Serbia has been recently taking a
similar shape as well.
As listed in their detailed and well-argued “Motion to
Appear Before the Trial Chambers as Amicus Curiae” (tabled as early as
September 2001), but naturally completely ignored by the Tribunal, a
group of 12 professors from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, headed by
Professor Kosta Cavoski, DSc, the work of the Tribunal shows the
following drastic deviations from the aforesaid documents, as well as
from its own regulations:
1. Combination of legislative and judicial functions;
2. Combination of prosecuting function and the function of the
judiciary;
3. Violation of the principle of a two-instance court procedure;
4. Violation of the right to liberty under the rules and practices for
detention;
5. Retroactive application of the principles of criminal law and the
illegality of sanctions;
6. Violation of the right to defence by treating the elements relevant
for defence as confidential;
7. Disproportion in working conditions between the Prosecution and the
Defence;
8. Violation of the procedural principle by accepting media accounts as
common facts;
9. Lack of expertise of the judges to conduct a trial due to their
unfamiliarity with the historical, political and civilizational
context;
10. Disregard for the presumption of innocence, or rather the
establishment of the presumption of guilt;
11. Violation of human rights during the arrest and extradition,
failure to employ habeas corpus;
12. Additional violations of rights in the atypical circumstances of
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic (who does not recognize the Tribunal).
The principle adopted by international judicial practice is
the prohibition on extradition of the citizens (even when there is a
formal legal basis for it) to a country or a legal system in which the
judiciary violates human rights. This is another strong point in
protecting the rights of our state and our citizens.
It is also necessary to activate all the mechanisms for the
protection of human rights, both within the UN system (including the
personal responsibility of the Secretary-General and the High
Commissioner on Human Rights in relation to the Charter), within the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and within the
European institutions.
What kind of reputation could such an institution have is
well illustrated by the information that while electing, in February
2003, 18 judges for the International Criminal Court (out of 43
candidates), when 85 countries participated in voting, the former
President of the Tribunal French Judge Claude Jorda was the last one to
be elected, not until the 33rd round of voting!
4. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEFENCE OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
The Hague Tribunal apparatus, amounting to 1,300 employees,
is not only unsuccessfully attempting to justify and prolong its
existence with the trial of President Milosevic, but is also becoming a
controlling factor of the internal political circumstances in Serbia,
thanks to its huge intelligence potential (probably the highest
concentration of intelligence personnel and experts in the
world,dealing exclusively with one country), which has been provenby
the events related to the assassination of the Prime Minister Djindjic,
illegally imposed state of emergency in the country and the abuses
thereof.
The fact that many of those arrested during the state of
emergency were previously making statements to the Prosecution in The
Hague, as well as the timing and the manner in which the Tribunal
presented to the public the video showing a ceremonial visit of
President Milosevic to theSpecial Operations Unit base in Kula, provide
the basis for suspicion of the Prosecution’s involvement in the latest
events. This has been further supported by the manner of distributing
to the public the insinuations as proved facts, allegedly resulting
from the police questioning of detainees, on the involvement of
President Milosevic and members of his family in crimes that had caused
political damage to nobody but him, by the way. The Prosecution, whose
presentation of evidence leaves a general impression that the Accused
is innocent, and the Government that lost the confidence of the
citizens, are doing the same job and in an obvious coordination. After
the unilateral withdrawal of the counterclaim against B&H and the
abandonment of the work on the counterclaim against Croatia before the
International Court of Justice, this Government is preparing to
formally renounce any legal action against NATO Member States, after
the unsuccessful amateurish attempt to compel the court to dismiss the
charges against NATO bythe futile arguing that we have no right to be a
party to a litigation since we were not a UN Member.
After the short-lived and limited media effects in Serbia,
this whole campaign resulted in preventing contacts of Slobodan
Milosevic with the members of his own family, which is a form of
psychological pressure on a prisoner, that we recollect only from the
times of the Otomans and the Nazis.
When Slobodan Milosevic is concerned, the magnitude of the
violation of human rights isdirectly proportional to the significance
attributed to this trial by the Tribunal. We will list only the most
remarkable examples. The extradition without a valid court decision, in
addition to a gross violation of the Constitution, which was
adjudicated upon by the Federal Constitutional Court on tree different
occasions. The majority of witnesses have no direct knowledge of the
events they testify about. The violation of the presumption of
innocence by proving certain criminal acts through the existence of
other criminal acts, not determined in court proceedings as committed.
Experts basing their “expert analyses and opinions” on the allegations
from the Indictment itself, used as a starting point for their
analyses. Witnesses and experts employed by the Prosecution. Cross
examination limited in time and in subject. Unjust and increasingly
frequent barring of the public from the trial. Violation of the right
to defence and of the principle of “equality of arms” by the
Prosecution that has a huge team and vast material resources, by
producing huge quantities of material, impossible even to read in
several years’ time and finally practical abolishment of the rifght to
defense by granting the defendant only three months (in fact six weeks)
to prepare his case while in detention. Conditions in detention and the
pace of the trial that amounts to torture of the defendant, who suffers
from malignant hypertension and coronary insufficiency, which in
addition to the lack of the adequate medical care endangers even the
very right to life and health.
Under all these conditions, even with the fact that he has
been deprived of his rights more than any other detainee both in regard
to the absence of help from his own state and to the material
conditions for the preparation of defence (due to his refusal to
recognize the Tribunal, his legal assistants are without fabulous fees
provided to all other counsels before the Tribunal), and recently
banned from the visits of his other co-workers and associates, Slobodan
Milosevic has generously decided to demand only a provisional release
to improve the state of his health and adequately prepare the case for
the Defendant.
The defence of President Milosevic is significant for a
number of reasons.
In the legal, historical and moral sense, it amounts to the
defence of the state and thepeople from the looming catastrophic
consequences of the violation of sovereignty and breach of security of
the country, as well as from the double loss as concerns war
reparations. One should beparticularly aware here that the Indictments
against Slobodan Milosevic include a distorted surveyof the entire
10-year history of our country and people. Estimating that period,
Slobodan Milosevic said in The Hague courtroom on 26 September 2002:
“Waged in this territory were not wars, but only one war,
the war against Yugoslavia. This war had been instigated and directed
by the greatest powers of the modern world, relying on their internal
allies, cadres of nationalism and separatism, with a dominant presence
of those forces defeated in the Second World War. This war was waged by
all possible means, by media, politically, economically, militarily.
This war was at first waged through a decade-long media campaign that
abused the monopoly over the global communications, then through a
foreign policy intervention, aimed at creating independent states out
of the Yugoslav republics, and then through the cruellest multi-year
economic campaign and sanctions against the FR of Yugoslavia, that
could only be qualified asgenocide, and finally – through military
aggression. Namely, in 1995 against Republika Srpska and in the
Operation “Storm”, with NATO forces participating in the largest ethnic
cleansing ever recorded, and in 1999 – against the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.”
In the political sense, this defence is the factor of
preservation of national dignity, after allthe troubles that had
happened to our peoples and our region. Its content and scope reflect
the existence of support and of willingness to help the defence, coming
from all the structures of our society.
As concerns resisting the mechanisms of aggression and
pressure that include the Tribunal itself, with the refusal to
recognize such a tribunal by the first head of state on trial before an
international body and with the major success in defending himself from
the indictments that are a fabrication of the joint intelligence
services of the US and certain NATO countries, opportunity arose only
for President Milosevic of all the people indicted in The Hague to
weaken and even to destroy this institution.
For all these reasons, the defence of Slobodan Milosevic
amounts to a project of national importance.
5. FUTURE WITHOUT THE HAGUE
Without an organized resistance to The Hague Tribunal, our
country and our nation have no future.
The only organization that vigorously and continually
develops such an activity within the country is FREEDOM Association.
In a situation when not only the activity of the state in
that sense is lacking, but also with attempts within Serbia to
discredit and even to prevent through threats and blackmail a serious
organizing within the non-governmental sector, the Serbian Diaspora has
a great opportunity but also a responsibility to ensure both
institutionally and materially a required activity and to allow
vastpotentials existing within the country to be fully activatedin
defence of the truth andinputting an end to the unjust pressures on our
country.
This activity could take several directions:
Organizing of expert teams consisting of domestic and
international jurists, who would help activate all the protective
mechanisms of the international law.
Creating an ambitious “truth foundation”, whose Council
would include the greatest names of our science and creativity, and
which would invest in projects of national significance related to the
affirmation of the truth, in defence at The Hague and against The Hague.
Supporting the unification into a broad political front of
all democratic and creative forces within the country, all patriotic
civil initiatives, in order to create a strong alternative to the
cloning of The Hague within Serbia, which is carried out by the current
regime and to restore democracy, sovereignty and national dignity, so
that Serbia could take its deserved place within the European family.
Life-treathening situation of President Milosevic and of the
truth should be defeated by serious mobilizations of creative forces
and by mass mobilizations of people. Only this way we can restore our
freedom, sovereignty, democracy and self- esteem.
---
AGGRESSORS SHALL NOT WRITE OUR HISTORY!
FREEDOM FOR PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC!
INTERNATIONAL DEMOS OF SERBIAN DIASPORA AND ALL PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE
THE HAGUE, 8 NOVEMBER 2003
14:00 – 15:00 Protest Rally at The Plein (City Center)
15:00 – 16:00 Protest March from The Plein to the Scheveningen Prison
16:00 – 17:00 Protest Rally in front of the Scheveningen Prison
---
SLOBODA urgently needs your donation.
Please find the detailed instructions at:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/pomoc.htm
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center)
Vladimir Krsljanin, Sloboda/Freedom Association, Belgrade
(writen: May 2003 / updated and translated from Serbian: October 2003)
George Soros, one of the main sponsors of The Hague Tribunal and of the
currently ruling clique in Serbia, received with the full honours paid
to him by this clique, demanded recently on theSerbian soil the
“independence for Kosovo”. An international conference on Bosnia &
Herzegovina is being prepared, supposedly to abolish RepublikaSrpska.
What would be the “legal basis” of such acts? “Organized expulsion of
the Albanians” from Kosovo & Metohija, as well as “genocide that
founded” Republika Srpska. Who creates this "legal basis"? The Hague
Tribunal.
- If you knew what you don’t know, would it be in favour or to the
detriment of the Accused?
- Certainly, it would be to his detriment.
Approximately thus ran the dialogue between the Prosecutor and a
certain de la Brosse who had accepted, although he doesn’t speak a word
of Serbian, to appear before the Tribunal as an expert witness, i.e. an
expert on the media in Serbia and in the SlobodanMilosevic trial, no
less. If an institution of that class is allowed to judge our modern
history without being resisted in an organized manner, we are to lose
our state, billions of dollars and any respect from others, as well as
the right to consider ourselves a civilized nation.
Just on its inglorious tenth anniversary, the Tribunal took another
Serbian life – that of General Momir Talic.Earlier on, The Hague
detention had accelerated the endof Slavko Dokmanovic, Dr Milan
Kovacevic, General Djordje Djukic. Simo Drljaca and Dragan Gagovic were
killed while being arrested, and Vlajko Stojiljkovic committed suicide
in protest.
The reminder of the inglorious balance of the «first ten years» of the
Tribunal is the following: 45 indictments have been brought in against
the Serbs, 12 against the Croats, 5 against the Muslims, one against
the Albanians, andnone against the Americans and their NATO allies.
Among those sentenced were 13 Serbs, fourCroats and three Muslims.
Three Croats and two Muslims were acquitted. These statistics alone
speak of bias and the political character of the Tribunal.
1. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IS ILLEGAL
Experts from 87 countries, including Professor Smilja Avramov,
participated at a meeting organized by the UN on the eve of the
adoption of the Statute, or rather before the formal establishingof the
Tribunal. None of these experts have pronounced themselves in favour of
this new creation.Nevertheless, the Security Council Resolution No. 827
was adopted unanimously on 25 May 1993.The motion to adopt this
Resolution was tabled by France. Russia was also among the authors of
the Draft Resolution. The “original idea” to establish an international
criminal court based upon the Chapter VII of the UN Charter, rather
than upon a treaty, is believed to belong to the former UN
Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Even the establishing of the
Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals had been based upon treaties. In this
case, the law was overridden by a political argument – that such a
procedure would take too much time. Article 24 of the UN Charter
assigns the Security Council “primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security”, while Articles 41 and
42 (of Chapter VII) enable it to impose sanctions against
countries. However, the only crime outside the Tribunal’s jurisdiction
is the very crime against peace, and the Tribunal itself doesn’t try
states at all, but only individuals. The establishing of the Tribunal
draws upon theArticle 29, which stipulates the right of the Security
Council to establish “subsidiary organs as it deems necessary for the
performance of its functions”. However, since the Security Council has
no judicial function (within the UN system only the International Court
of Justice does), it cannot be delegated to a subsidiary organ,
either.
The Tribunal conducts trials involving acts of grave
breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Most of them relate to
international conflicts. However, temporal jurisdiction of the Tribunal
was assumed on 1 January 1991, namely seven months prior to the
unilateral secession or rather the declaration of independence of
Slovenia and Croatia (and two and a half years prior to the
establishing of the Tribunal itself). Thus the retroactive application
of the principles of criminal lawis being introduced, a deviation from
the generally accepted.This is because the Tribunal in practice either
treats all conflicts as international without proving it, or imposes
the application of international norms on conflicts other than
international as well. However, this can relate only to the application
of these norms by national courts. (N.A. Zverev: Prestupleniya i
nakazaniya, Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 maya 2003g).
The exemption of natural persons from a national
jurisdiction is possible only if a state has committed an international
crime (something which has not been determined by the International
Court of Justice, and which is beyond the competence of The Hague
Tribunal to determine), or if a state voluntarily agrees to it, by
entering into a treaty.Moreover, The Hague Tribunal has only recently
started to shyly accept the right of any state to put its citizens on
trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
When ad hoc tribunals are concerned, the absence of
universality or rather of equality as one of the basic legal principles
is contrary to the principle of sovereign equality of states as well.At
the last Security Council session discussing the work of The Hague
Tribunal, held in November last year, which was closed to the public,
the representative of Russia pointed out the illogical situation of the
simultaneous existence of both the International Criminal Court (whose
Statute has not been ratified by Russia either, by the way) and the ad
hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda (the lack of the permanent
International Criminal Court had been one of the key arguments for
their establishing). In his words, the way out of this situation might
be sought in the fact that all the states of the former Yugoslavia have
ratified the Statute of the International Criminal Court.Unfortunately,
this clear diplomatic signal found no response from the Belgrade
authorities.
In the situation when nobody has yet initiated the procedure
for providing an advisory opinion from the International Court of
Justice on the legality of the decision to establish the Tribunal, the
unofficial judgement was passed by Professor Mohammed Bedjaoui, former
President of the International Court of Justice, in his book “The New
World Order and the Security Council: Testing the Legality of Its
Acts”, by including the Resolution No. 827 and the one that preceded
it, No. 808, among those legally most contentious and the first that
should be subject to test.
As a result, the Resolutions No. 808 and 827 do not create
legally binding obligations, particularly in view of the Article 25 of
the UN Charter, which explicitly states: “The Members of the UN agree
to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in
accordance with the present Charter”. By its advisory opinion of 21
June 1971, the International Court of Justice also confirmed that the
Member States are not obligated to carry out the Security Council
decisions that are not in accordance with the Charter.
2. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL IS A POLITICAL COURT
The statements from the former Prosecutor Louise Arbour, US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (“mother of the Tribunal”), NATO
spokesman Jamie Shea and others, testify tothe direct dependence of the
Tribunal on the US Administration and the NATO Alliance. At the time of
the kidnapping of President Milosevic, the conspicuous link to the NATO
Alliance web sitedisappeared from the Tribunal’s homepage, and that was
the only other link there, in addition to the link to the UN website.
The Tribunal that should be independent from all governments
shows unacceptable bias also in its financing, to which the Government
of Saudi Arabia and George Soros contributed or still contribute, in
addition to large sums from the UN budget, as well as in recruiting its
personnel from the intelligence services of the countries that waged
the war against Yugoslavia.
The Indictment against President Milosevic and other highest
officials of Serbia and the FRY was initiated in the midst of NATO
aggression upon our country. There are many examples of a direct
connection between the work of the Tribunal and political
circumstances. Thefirst Indictment against Karadzic and Mladic was
initiated immediately after the attack on Srebrenica had begun, and the
second one after NATO bombardment of the Republika Srpska. The
Indictments against Slobodan Milosevic covering Croatia and B&H were
initiated only after the Tribunal had taken hold of him. The liability
of individuals for the crimes against the international law cannot be
separated from the liability of states for these crimes. However, The
Hague Tribunal conducts trials of individuals, while the liability of
states is not determined.
On the other hand, the Tribunal’s Prosecution dismissed the
motion to indict NATO leaders for war crimes committed during the
aggression upon Yugoslavia, by appointing as thepresenterthe former
legal adviser to the Ministry of Defence of Canada.Naturally,
thepresenterconcluded there was no probable cause to initiate
investigation.
The position of the US Administration on the jurisdiction of
international courts over its own citizens can be instructive to us as
well, at least to such an extent that one of the methods of ourdefence
against biased Tribunal might be to initiate as many proceedings as
possible against the US citizens whose liability for the war crimes in
Yugoslavia is undeniable.
3. THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL MASSIVELY VIOLATES HUMAN RIGHTS
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms, as well as the practice of the European Court of
Human Rights lay down the standards in the area of the judiciary, from
which the rules and practice of The Hague Tribunalundoubtedly and
drastically deviate. Unfortunately, and unfortunately not by accident,
the situation with human rights in Serbia has been recently taking a
similar shape as well.
As listed in their detailed and well-argued “Motion to
Appear Before the Trial Chambers as Amicus Curiae” (tabled as early as
September 2001), but naturally completely ignored by the Tribunal, a
group of 12 professors from the Faculty of Law in Belgrade, headed by
Professor Kosta Cavoski, DSc, the work of the Tribunal shows the
following drastic deviations from the aforesaid documents, as well as
from its own regulations:
1. Combination of legislative and judicial functions;
2. Combination of prosecuting function and the function of the
judiciary;
3. Violation of the principle of a two-instance court procedure;
4. Violation of the right to liberty under the rules and practices for
detention;
5. Retroactive application of the principles of criminal law and the
illegality of sanctions;
6. Violation of the right to defence by treating the elements relevant
for defence as confidential;
7. Disproportion in working conditions between the Prosecution and the
Defence;
8. Violation of the procedural principle by accepting media accounts as
common facts;
9. Lack of expertise of the judges to conduct a trial due to their
unfamiliarity with the historical, political and civilizational
context;
10. Disregard for the presumption of innocence, or rather the
establishment of the presumption of guilt;
11. Violation of human rights during the arrest and extradition,
failure to employ habeas corpus;
12. Additional violations of rights in the atypical circumstances of
the trial of Slobodan Milosevic (who does not recognize the Tribunal).
The principle adopted by international judicial practice is
the prohibition on extradition of the citizens (even when there is a
formal legal basis for it) to a country or a legal system in which the
judiciary violates human rights. This is another strong point in
protecting the rights of our state and our citizens.
It is also necessary to activate all the mechanisms for the
protection of human rights, both within the UN system (including the
personal responsibility of the Secretary-General and the High
Commissioner on Human Rights in relation to the Charter), within the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and within the
European institutions.
What kind of reputation could such an institution have is
well illustrated by the information that while electing, in February
2003, 18 judges for the International Criminal Court (out of 43
candidates), when 85 countries participated in voting, the former
President of the Tribunal French Judge Claude Jorda was the last one to
be elected, not until the 33rd round of voting!
4. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DEFENCE OF SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
The Hague Tribunal apparatus, amounting to 1,300 employees,
is not only unsuccessfully attempting to justify and prolong its
existence with the trial of President Milosevic, but is also becoming a
controlling factor of the internal political circumstances in Serbia,
thanks to its huge intelligence potential (probably the highest
concentration of intelligence personnel and experts in the
world,dealing exclusively with one country), which has been provenby
the events related to the assassination of the Prime Minister Djindjic,
illegally imposed state of emergency in the country and the abuses
thereof.
The fact that many of those arrested during the state of
emergency were previously making statements to the Prosecution in The
Hague, as well as the timing and the manner in which the Tribunal
presented to the public the video showing a ceremonial visit of
President Milosevic to theSpecial Operations Unit base in Kula, provide
the basis for suspicion of the Prosecution’s involvement in the latest
events. This has been further supported by the manner of distributing
to the public the insinuations as proved facts, allegedly resulting
from the police questioning of detainees, on the involvement of
President Milosevic and members of his family in crimes that had caused
political damage to nobody but him, by the way. The Prosecution, whose
presentation of evidence leaves a general impression that the Accused
is innocent, and the Government that lost the confidence of the
citizens, are doing the same job and in an obvious coordination. After
the unilateral withdrawal of the counterclaim against B&H and the
abandonment of the work on the counterclaim against Croatia before the
International Court of Justice, this Government is preparing to
formally renounce any legal action against NATO Member States, after
the unsuccessful amateurish attempt to compel the court to dismiss the
charges against NATO bythe futile arguing that we have no right to be a
party to a litigation since we were not a UN Member.
After the short-lived and limited media effects in Serbia,
this whole campaign resulted in preventing contacts of Slobodan
Milosevic with the members of his own family, which is a form of
psychological pressure on a prisoner, that we recollect only from the
times of the Otomans and the Nazis.
When Slobodan Milosevic is concerned, the magnitude of the
violation of human rights isdirectly proportional to the significance
attributed to this trial by the Tribunal. We will list only the most
remarkable examples. The extradition without a valid court decision, in
addition to a gross violation of the Constitution, which was
adjudicated upon by the Federal Constitutional Court on tree different
occasions. The majority of witnesses have no direct knowledge of the
events they testify about. The violation of the presumption of
innocence by proving certain criminal acts through the existence of
other criminal acts, not determined in court proceedings as committed.
Experts basing their “expert analyses and opinions” on the allegations
from the Indictment itself, used as a starting point for their
analyses. Witnesses and experts employed by the Prosecution. Cross
examination limited in time and in subject. Unjust and increasingly
frequent barring of the public from the trial. Violation of the right
to defence and of the principle of “equality of arms” by the
Prosecution that has a huge team and vast material resources, by
producing huge quantities of material, impossible even to read in
several years’ time and finally practical abolishment of the rifght to
defense by granting the defendant only three months (in fact six weeks)
to prepare his case while in detention. Conditions in detention and the
pace of the trial that amounts to torture of the defendant, who suffers
from malignant hypertension and coronary insufficiency, which in
addition to the lack of the adequate medical care endangers even the
very right to life and health.
Under all these conditions, even with the fact that he has
been deprived of his rights more than any other detainee both in regard
to the absence of help from his own state and to the material
conditions for the preparation of defence (due to his refusal to
recognize the Tribunal, his legal assistants are without fabulous fees
provided to all other counsels before the Tribunal), and recently
banned from the visits of his other co-workers and associates, Slobodan
Milosevic has generously decided to demand only a provisional release
to improve the state of his health and adequately prepare the case for
the Defendant.
The defence of President Milosevic is significant for a
number of reasons.
In the legal, historical and moral sense, it amounts to the
defence of the state and thepeople from the looming catastrophic
consequences of the violation of sovereignty and breach of security of
the country, as well as from the double loss as concerns war
reparations. One should beparticularly aware here that the Indictments
against Slobodan Milosevic include a distorted surveyof the entire
10-year history of our country and people. Estimating that period,
Slobodan Milosevic said in The Hague courtroom on 26 September 2002:
“Waged in this territory were not wars, but only one war,
the war against Yugoslavia. This war had been instigated and directed
by the greatest powers of the modern world, relying on their internal
allies, cadres of nationalism and separatism, with a dominant presence
of those forces defeated in the Second World War. This war was waged by
all possible means, by media, politically, economically, militarily.
This war was at first waged through a decade-long media campaign that
abused the monopoly over the global communications, then through a
foreign policy intervention, aimed at creating independent states out
of the Yugoslav republics, and then through the cruellest multi-year
economic campaign and sanctions against the FR of Yugoslavia, that
could only be qualified asgenocide, and finally – through military
aggression. Namely, in 1995 against Republika Srpska and in the
Operation “Storm”, with NATO forces participating in the largest ethnic
cleansing ever recorded, and in 1999 – against the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.”
In the political sense, this defence is the factor of
preservation of national dignity, after allthe troubles that had
happened to our peoples and our region. Its content and scope reflect
the existence of support and of willingness to help the defence, coming
from all the structures of our society.
As concerns resisting the mechanisms of aggression and
pressure that include the Tribunal itself, with the refusal to
recognize such a tribunal by the first head of state on trial before an
international body and with the major success in defending himself from
the indictments that are a fabrication of the joint intelligence
services of the US and certain NATO countries, opportunity arose only
for President Milosevic of all the people indicted in The Hague to
weaken and even to destroy this institution.
For all these reasons, the defence of Slobodan Milosevic
amounts to a project of national importance.
5. FUTURE WITHOUT THE HAGUE
Without an organized resistance to The Hague Tribunal, our
country and our nation have no future.
The only organization that vigorously and continually
develops such an activity within the country is FREEDOM Association.
In a situation when not only the activity of the state in
that sense is lacking, but also with attempts within Serbia to
discredit and even to prevent through threats and blackmail a serious
organizing within the non-governmental sector, the Serbian Diaspora has
a great opportunity but also a responsibility to ensure both
institutionally and materially a required activity and to allow
vastpotentials existing within the country to be fully activatedin
defence of the truth andinputting an end to the unjust pressures on our
country.
This activity could take several directions:
Organizing of expert teams consisting of domestic and
international jurists, who would help activate all the protective
mechanisms of the international law.
Creating an ambitious “truth foundation”, whose Council
would include the greatest names of our science and creativity, and
which would invest in projects of national significance related to the
affirmation of the truth, in defence at The Hague and against The Hague.
Supporting the unification into a broad political front of
all democratic and creative forces within the country, all patriotic
civil initiatives, in order to create a strong alternative to the
cloning of The Hague within Serbia, which is carried out by the current
regime and to restore democracy, sovereignty and national dignity, so
that Serbia could take its deserved place within the European family.
Life-treathening situation of President Milosevic and of the
truth should be defeated by serious mobilizations of creative forces
and by mass mobilizations of people. Only this way we can restore our
freedom, sovereignty, democracy and self- esteem.
---
AGGRESSORS SHALL NOT WRITE OUR HISTORY!
FREEDOM FOR PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC!
INTERNATIONAL DEMOS OF SERBIAN DIASPORA AND ALL PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE
THE HAGUE, 8 NOVEMBER 2003
14:00 – 15:00 Protest Rally at The Plein (City Center)
15:00 – 16:00 Protest March from The Plein to the Scheveningen Prison
16:00 – 17:00 Protest Rally in front of the Scheveningen Prison
---
SLOBODA urgently needs your donation.
Please find the detailed instructions at:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/pomoc.htm
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sloboda.org.yu/ (Sloboda/Freedom association)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.free-slobo.de/ (German section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsm-us.org/ (US section of ICDSM)
http://www.icdsmireland.org/ (ICDSM Ireland)
http://www.wpc-in.org/ (world peace council)
http://www.geocities.com/b_antinato/ (Balkan antiNATO center)