Subject: MAJOR ACTION OF LAWYERS NEEDED!
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 02:45:37 +0200
From: "Vladimir Krsljanin"
Yesterday, May 28, a letter of FREEDOM
Association has been handed over to the
Embassies of United States of America and
United Kingdom in Belgrade UNDER PROTEST.
Today, the same letter will be handed to all
other Embassies of the UN Security Council
member countries. The Security Council is
formally responsible for the works of the
Hague "tribunal", but has no mechanism of
monitoring of the works of its own
Frankenstein child. Annual short discussions
in the SC with the President and Main
Prosecutor of ICTY, who usually report on
number of cases processed and necessary funds
is certainly not enough to judge the works of
this legal monster. In the same way, e.g.
managers of a concentration camp could submit
their reports. This situation is very
dangerous, but it is not strange, since the SC
(nor even the General Assembly) has no
judiciary power, so it can not transfer it to
its subsidiary organ.
With the "trial" of Slobodan Milosevic,
number of political and legal misuses and
malfunctions in ICTY rapidly and shamefully
increased. ICTY discredits the very idea of
international judiciary.
So it's high time for concrete action of Bars'
Associations and Chambers, Law Faculties and
Institutes, interested NGOs and all honest and
decent lawyers - to expose the primarily
political nature of this US/NATO instrument of
aggression called "tribunal" by exposing how
little it has in common with internationally
accepted standards and principles of fair
trial and human rights protection.
Experts' opinions, further independent
research and even forming of commissions to
evaluate all violations of law by ICTY, and
especially in the case of Slobodan Milosevic,
are needed.
Therefore we call upon all committees for the
defense of Slobodan Milosevic world wide and
all friends of justice to act in that
direction.
Lawyers' community in SC member countries
should be particularly concerned, and should
submit to their governments concrete
recommendations for abolishment of this ad hoc
"court" which puts on trial political leaders
of the people that opposed NATO and blinds the
eyes over the massive crimes committed by NATO
itself.
Hoping that letter submitted today by FREEDOM
Association, and written by Belgrade law
experts, who follow the "trial" in The Hague
can serve as good first impulse for such
activities, we present below its content:
In the proceedings conducted against Slobodan
Milosevic before the illegal Hague Tribunal established
contrary to the Charter of the United Nations, more and
more is getting disclosed the true nature of this
institution, the frightening malignant tumor in the tissue
of civilization created by the mankind for centuries, and a
serious offence against law and justice for which numerous
generations have been aspiring and building with great
efforts.
Brought to a deadlock and discredited by more
and more evident preposterousness of the accusations
against Slobodan Milosevic, by total incapability of the
Prosecution and by the farce into which the "procedure of
presentation of evidence" has transformed and in which, up
to now, not a single testifying had any legal and probative
value and because of which every observer, even the least
interested, cannot help experiencing the feeling of shame,
the Hague Tribunal personified in the Trial Chamber
presided by the increasingly nervous judge Richard May, is
more and more desisting even from the illusion, present at
the beginning of the "trial", of valuing the form, and is
more and more seriously and drastically violating the
rights of Slobodan Milosevic guaranteed to him by
international law, and even laid down in the Statute and
the in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of this illegal
Tribunal.
In addition to the wearing-out tempo of the
trial and exhaustion by worthless evidence, coupled by
simultaneous limitation of the most elementary rights and
needs, such as adequate rest, walks in fresh air, regular
and timely meals, etc., which is increasingly getting the
features of torture (prohibited by Article 7 of the
International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights and a
set of other international documents), in addition to
limitation of the time for examination of witnesses and
interventions of the Trial Chamber's presiding judge
whenever the witnesses face difficulties due to the lack of
logic and contradictions in their false statements, which
(contrary to Article 14 of the International Covenant on
Civic and Political Rights) violates the principle of
contradictoriness and the right to defence, in addition to
accepting and non-sending away the witness having no direct
knowledge about the topics on which they testify (almost
all witnesses are such, while only one testifying was
eliminated because of indirectness), in addition to
violating the presumption of innocence (envisaged by
Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civic and
Political Rights) by proving one set of alleged criminal
offences by other criminal offences not identified by the
Tribunal (for example, "expert" statistician Patrick Ball
was proving by "statistical methods" that movements of the
Albanian population from Kosovo and Metohija had been
caused by terror and murders committed by the army and the
police, without having been such murders established in any
court proceedings, and that their "existence" and the
"places" where they were "committed" were actually only the
"supposed" ones on the grounds of the "statistical methods"
used - in which process, according to the extensively
defined system of command responsibility applied before the
Tribunal, all such imaginary acts and their alleged
consequences are automatically charged against the then
President of the Republic), in addition to very late
submission of the documents and disclosure of identity of
the witnesses and of the contents of their statements, in
addition to abrupt changes in the order of testifying
whereby the right to defence is limited (envisaged by
Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civic and
Political Rights), the Hague Tribunal has recently started
submitting to Slobodan Milosevic very extensive and complex
documents relevant for the trial, and for his defence as
well, only in the English language and without translation
into Serbian in which way his right envisaged by Article 14
of the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights
is violated, as it is also violated pursuant to Articles 21
of the Hague Tribunal's Statute and 66 of the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence of this illegal court. Thus, as many
as 38 folders containing documents on the exhumation of
corpses, with highly complex technical terminology were
submitted to Slobodan Milosevic only in English, while the
photos contained in the folders were given to the "accused"
in the form of photocopies, black and white and thus
indiscernible, and not in colors as their originals that
the Prosecution and the Trial Chamber dispose of. On the
basis of the documents in these folders a finding of expert
witness, Dr. Erick Backar, was prepared, he testified
before the Tribunal and Slobodan Milosevic had to
cross-examine him without adequate preparation for the
defence.
This last case of the violation of Slobodan
Milosevic's rights represents more than a serious warning
that these illegal proceedings before the illegal tribunal
are transforming into an open violence against the
"accused", the violence that will by all indications be
more and more severe, because the time and the course of
the "proceedings" are increasingly disclosing the falseness
and fabrication of all charges against Slobodan Milosevic.
In view of all of the above said, and in
particular the most recent violations of Slobodan
Milosevic's rights, we are inviting all justice-loving
public and all decision-making factors in Yugoslavia and in
the world to oppose the violence against Slobodan Milosevic
and to advocate accomplishment what the law and justice
bid, which is:
FREEDOM FOR SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only Serbian newspaper
advocating liberation)
===*===
Subject: re justice may statement
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 00:41:07 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
CANA UK Director William Spring has appealed to the
presiding judge in the trial of Mr Slobodan
Milosevic now proceeding @ the Hague Tribunal to stand down .
Copy of e mail sent tonight to the Hague Tribunal pasted below.
To the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia:
for the attention of Mr Justice May
I have just read a document on the Internet regarding the
appalling treatment being meted out to Mr
Slobodan Milosevic by your Tribunal.
I am convinced this amount to torture.
I refer you to the statement below - particularly the
section underlined.
Mr Justice May: you are an official of the UK Government,
& only 'loaned' to the Tribunal & therefore not
allowed under UK domestic law to be a party to such
humiliating treatment of the accused.
Such treatment as described below is in violation of
European law & all international protocols.
This is an appeal from CANA UK for Mr Justice May to
stand down as the presiding judge in this case.
If he does not agree to do this I propose to lodge a
formal complaint to the Lord Chancellor @ the same
time requesting permission to bring a private prosecution
for torture, on the ground that the learned
judge has contravened section 134 of the Criminal Justice
Act 1988, which prohibits any UK official
from engaging in torture in the course of duty.
As a UK judge Mr Justice May is required to hold to certain
values. He has failed to do that. He has
shamed the English judiciary & our country & is intent
only on protecting terrorists. He is not giving a
fair trial to the accused, whose only crime is that he
withstood, from March to June 1999, illegal military
aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
by the United States & Great Britain & the other
NATO states.
from William Spring Director CANA
(Christians Against Nato Aggression)
UK
tel: 44 208 376 1454
canauk@...
---
Subject: improper conduct of this trial
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 09:11:57 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
To: "Hague Tribunal" <fisk.icty@...>
To the Presiding Judge @ the International Criminal
Tribunal @ The Hague.
Last night I sent a e mail to your Tribunal asking
you to stand down.
I have now received information that when General
Maisoneuve appeared before the Tribunal testifying re the
so called Racack Massacre & when he was asked
by Milosevic if, after everything he found out so far
about the Racack events he still personally considers
there had been a massacre, you "promptly intervened and
explicitly prevented him from answering that question."
Is this true?
If so this is only one of many such interjections by you
to prevent not merely a fair trial, but the emergence of
basic facts in a public forum concerning a most important
episode in contemporary European history.
Can you please explain your behaviour?
Yours sincerely William Spring
---
Subject: criticism of AI/HRW
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:13:19 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
From The Director Christians Against Nato Aggression (CANA) UK
canauk@...
www.canauk.human-rights.org
telephone 44 208 376 1454
Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International come in for
more criticism in a letter
sent today to Spectator editor Boris Johnson.
A copy of the letter is pasted below.
The original Spectator article of June 8th 2002 by Neil Clark can be
viewed on their web site.
www.spectator.co.uk
June 25th 2002
To The Editor
The Spectator
London
>From William Spring
Director Christians Against Nato Aggression UK
Tel 0208 376 1454
Dear Sir,
Neither Richard Bunting nor Steve Crawshaw answer
the central criticisms of their respective organisations
as delivered by Neil Clark (Spectator June 8th).
International justice has become a political instrument
in the hands of the United States to attain its foreign
policy goals & this phenomenon goes entirely unremarked.
The spectacle of the Milosevic "trial" proves the point.
Neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch have raised a
whisper of protest against this evidently political process.
Specifically Human Rights Watch is involved very heavily
in the prosecution of the case & the administration of the
so called "Court".
HRW is beholden to the same paymasters as illegally fund
the Court, (as Neil Clark pointed out.)
These criticisms are ignored.
I quote from a report of Mr Ian Johnson who recently returned
from The Hague:
"To spend one day at The Hague Tribunal is enough to confirm
the worst of suspicions. What is actually taking place in
the heart of 'democratic' Europe is a show trial so blatant,
so lacking in any form of legality, that it brings shame to
those who are participating in it and to those who refuse
to challenge it..."
Mr Johnson points out
"....the prosecution has been preparing their case for
years, their witnesses are well rehearsed, hearsay evidence
is accepted, as is secret testimony, and cross-examination time
is restricted....add to this the physical and psychological
conditions that Mr Milosevic and other Yugoslav
prisoners are subject to.
"They are treated as if they have already been convicted, being
kept in cells and under constant surveillance, having their mail
censored, family visits restricted, any communication with
their families to be at their own expense, and restrictions on
what they can see or hear on radio or television.
"And, especially in the case of Mr Milosevic, a refusal to
allow him to meet with the legal advisors of his choice.
"Several prisoners have already died while in custody and
to the shame of organisations such as Amnesty International, no
investigation into these deaths has been forthcoming..."
Yours sincerely
William Spring
Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 02:45:37 +0200
From: "Vladimir Krsljanin"
Yesterday, May 28, a letter of FREEDOM
Association has been handed over to the
Embassies of United States of America and
United Kingdom in Belgrade UNDER PROTEST.
Today, the same letter will be handed to all
other Embassies of the UN Security Council
member countries. The Security Council is
formally responsible for the works of the
Hague "tribunal", but has no mechanism of
monitoring of the works of its own
Frankenstein child. Annual short discussions
in the SC with the President and Main
Prosecutor of ICTY, who usually report on
number of cases processed and necessary funds
is certainly not enough to judge the works of
this legal monster. In the same way, e.g.
managers of a concentration camp could submit
their reports. This situation is very
dangerous, but it is not strange, since the SC
(nor even the General Assembly) has no
judiciary power, so it can not transfer it to
its subsidiary organ.
With the "trial" of Slobodan Milosevic,
number of political and legal misuses and
malfunctions in ICTY rapidly and shamefully
increased. ICTY discredits the very idea of
international judiciary.
So it's high time for concrete action of Bars'
Associations and Chambers, Law Faculties and
Institutes, interested NGOs and all honest and
decent lawyers - to expose the primarily
political nature of this US/NATO instrument of
aggression called "tribunal" by exposing how
little it has in common with internationally
accepted standards and principles of fair
trial and human rights protection.
Experts' opinions, further independent
research and even forming of commissions to
evaluate all violations of law by ICTY, and
especially in the case of Slobodan Milosevic,
are needed.
Therefore we call upon all committees for the
defense of Slobodan Milosevic world wide and
all friends of justice to act in that
direction.
Lawyers' community in SC member countries
should be particularly concerned, and should
submit to their governments concrete
recommendations for abolishment of this ad hoc
"court" which puts on trial political leaders
of the people that opposed NATO and blinds the
eyes over the massive crimes committed by NATO
itself.
Hoping that letter submitted today by FREEDOM
Association, and written by Belgrade law
experts, who follow the "trial" in The Hague
can serve as good first impulse for such
activities, we present below its content:
In the proceedings conducted against Slobodan
Milosevic before the illegal Hague Tribunal established
contrary to the Charter of the United Nations, more and
more is getting disclosed the true nature of this
institution, the frightening malignant tumor in the tissue
of civilization created by the mankind for centuries, and a
serious offence against law and justice for which numerous
generations have been aspiring and building with great
efforts.
Brought to a deadlock and discredited by more
and more evident preposterousness of the accusations
against Slobodan Milosevic, by total incapability of the
Prosecution and by the farce into which the "procedure of
presentation of evidence" has transformed and in which, up
to now, not a single testifying had any legal and probative
value and because of which every observer, even the least
interested, cannot help experiencing the feeling of shame,
the Hague Tribunal personified in the Trial Chamber
presided by the increasingly nervous judge Richard May, is
more and more desisting even from the illusion, present at
the beginning of the "trial", of valuing the form, and is
more and more seriously and drastically violating the
rights of Slobodan Milosevic guaranteed to him by
international law, and even laid down in the Statute and
the in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence of this illegal
Tribunal.
In addition to the wearing-out tempo of the
trial and exhaustion by worthless evidence, coupled by
simultaneous limitation of the most elementary rights and
needs, such as adequate rest, walks in fresh air, regular
and timely meals, etc., which is increasingly getting the
features of torture (prohibited by Article 7 of the
International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights and a
set of other international documents), in addition to
limitation of the time for examination of witnesses and
interventions of the Trial Chamber's presiding judge
whenever the witnesses face difficulties due to the lack of
logic and contradictions in their false statements, which
(contrary to Article 14 of the International Covenant on
Civic and Political Rights) violates the principle of
contradictoriness and the right to defence, in addition to
accepting and non-sending away the witness having no direct
knowledge about the topics on which they testify (almost
all witnesses are such, while only one testifying was
eliminated because of indirectness), in addition to
violating the presumption of innocence (envisaged by
Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civic and
Political Rights) by proving one set of alleged criminal
offences by other criminal offences not identified by the
Tribunal (for example, "expert" statistician Patrick Ball
was proving by "statistical methods" that movements of the
Albanian population from Kosovo and Metohija had been
caused by terror and murders committed by the army and the
police, without having been such murders established in any
court proceedings, and that their "existence" and the
"places" where they were "committed" were actually only the
"supposed" ones on the grounds of the "statistical methods"
used - in which process, according to the extensively
defined system of command responsibility applied before the
Tribunal, all such imaginary acts and their alleged
consequences are automatically charged against the then
President of the Republic), in addition to very late
submission of the documents and disclosure of identity of
the witnesses and of the contents of their statements, in
addition to abrupt changes in the order of testifying
whereby the right to defence is limited (envisaged by
Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civic and
Political Rights), the Hague Tribunal has recently started
submitting to Slobodan Milosevic very extensive and complex
documents relevant for the trial, and for his defence as
well, only in the English language and without translation
into Serbian in which way his right envisaged by Article 14
of the International Covenant on Civic and Political Rights
is violated, as it is also violated pursuant to Articles 21
of the Hague Tribunal's Statute and 66 of the Rules of
Procedure and Evidence of this illegal court. Thus, as many
as 38 folders containing documents on the exhumation of
corpses, with highly complex technical terminology were
submitted to Slobodan Milosevic only in English, while the
photos contained in the folders were given to the "accused"
in the form of photocopies, black and white and thus
indiscernible, and not in colors as their originals that
the Prosecution and the Trial Chamber dispose of. On the
basis of the documents in these folders a finding of expert
witness, Dr. Erick Backar, was prepared, he testified
before the Tribunal and Slobodan Milosevic had to
cross-examine him without adequate preparation for the
defence.
This last case of the violation of Slobodan
Milosevic's rights represents more than a serious warning
that these illegal proceedings before the illegal tribunal
are transforming into an open violence against the
"accused", the violence that will by all indications be
more and more severe, because the time and the course of
the "proceedings" are increasingly disclosing the falseness
and fabrication of all charges against Slobodan Milosevic.
In view of all of the above said, and in
particular the most recent violations of Slobodan
Milosevic's rights, we are inviting all justice-loving
public and all decision-making factors in Yugoslavia and in
the world to oppose the violence against Slobodan Milosevic
and to advocate accomplishment what the law and justice
bid, which is:
FREEDOM FOR SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
To join or help this struggle, visit:
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website)
http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals)
http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan
Milosevic)
http://www.jutarnje.co.yu/ ('morning news' the only Serbian newspaper
advocating liberation)
===*===
Subject: re justice may statement
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 00:41:07 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
CANA UK Director William Spring has appealed to the
presiding judge in the trial of Mr Slobodan
Milosevic now proceeding @ the Hague Tribunal to stand down .
Copy of e mail sent tonight to the Hague Tribunal pasted below.
To the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia:
for the attention of Mr Justice May
I have just read a document on the Internet regarding the
appalling treatment being meted out to Mr
Slobodan Milosevic by your Tribunal.
I am convinced this amount to torture.
I refer you to the statement below - particularly the
section underlined.
Mr Justice May: you are an official of the UK Government,
& only 'loaned' to the Tribunal & therefore not
allowed under UK domestic law to be a party to such
humiliating treatment of the accused.
Such treatment as described below is in violation of
European law & all international protocols.
This is an appeal from CANA UK for Mr Justice May to
stand down as the presiding judge in this case.
If he does not agree to do this I propose to lodge a
formal complaint to the Lord Chancellor @ the same
time requesting permission to bring a private prosecution
for torture, on the ground that the learned
judge has contravened section 134 of the Criminal Justice
Act 1988, which prohibits any UK official
from engaging in torture in the course of duty.
As a UK judge Mr Justice May is required to hold to certain
values. He has failed to do that. He has
shamed the English judiciary & our country & is intent
only on protecting terrorists. He is not giving a
fair trial to the accused, whose only crime is that he
withstood, from March to June 1999, illegal military
aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
by the United States & Great Britain & the other
NATO states.
from William Spring Director CANA
(Christians Against Nato Aggression)
UK
tel: 44 208 376 1454
canauk@...
---
Subject: improper conduct of this trial
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 2002 09:11:57 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
To: "Hague Tribunal" <fisk.icty@...>
To the Presiding Judge @ the International Criminal
Tribunal @ The Hague.
Last night I sent a e mail to your Tribunal asking
you to stand down.
I have now received information that when General
Maisoneuve appeared before the Tribunal testifying re the
so called Racack Massacre & when he was asked
by Milosevic if, after everything he found out so far
about the Racack events he still personally considers
there had been a massacre, you "promptly intervened and
explicitly prevented him from answering that question."
Is this true?
If so this is only one of many such interjections by you
to prevent not merely a fair trial, but the emergence of
basic facts in a public forum concerning a most important
episode in contemporary European history.
Can you please explain your behaviour?
Yours sincerely William Spring
---
Subject: criticism of AI/HRW
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 12:13:19 +0100
From: "canauk" <canauk@...>
From The Director Christians Against Nato Aggression (CANA) UK
canauk@...
www.canauk.human-rights.org
telephone 44 208 376 1454
Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International come in for
more criticism in a letter
sent today to Spectator editor Boris Johnson.
A copy of the letter is pasted below.
The original Spectator article of June 8th 2002 by Neil Clark can be
viewed on their web site.
www.spectator.co.uk
June 25th 2002
To The Editor
The Spectator
London
>From William Spring
Director Christians Against Nato Aggression UK
Tel 0208 376 1454
Dear Sir,
Neither Richard Bunting nor Steve Crawshaw answer
the central criticisms of their respective organisations
as delivered by Neil Clark (Spectator June 8th).
International justice has become a political instrument
in the hands of the United States to attain its foreign
policy goals & this phenomenon goes entirely unremarked.
The spectacle of the Milosevic "trial" proves the point.
Neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch have raised a
whisper of protest against this evidently political process.
Specifically Human Rights Watch is involved very heavily
in the prosecution of the case & the administration of the
so called "Court".
HRW is beholden to the same paymasters as illegally fund
the Court, (as Neil Clark pointed out.)
These criticisms are ignored.
I quote from a report of Mr Ian Johnson who recently returned
from The Hague:
"To spend one day at The Hague Tribunal is enough to confirm
the worst of suspicions. What is actually taking place in
the heart of 'democratic' Europe is a show trial so blatant,
so lacking in any form of legality, that it brings shame to
those who are participating in it and to those who refuse
to challenge it..."
Mr Johnson points out
"....the prosecution has been preparing their case for
years, their witnesses are well rehearsed, hearsay evidence
is accepted, as is secret testimony, and cross-examination time
is restricted....add to this the physical and psychological
conditions that Mr Milosevic and other Yugoslav
prisoners are subject to.
"They are treated as if they have already been convicted, being
kept in cells and under constant surveillance, having their mail
censored, family visits restricted, any communication with
their families to be at their own expense, and restrictions on
what they can see or hear on radio or television.
"And, especially in the case of Mr Milosevic, a refusal to
allow him to meet with the legal advisors of his choice.
"Several prisoners have already died while in custody and
to the shame of organisations such as Amnesty International, no
investigation into these deaths has been forthcoming..."
Yours sincerely
William Spring