* IAC:
- Presa di posizione dell'IAC sull'apparente interessamento del
Tribunale dell'Aia ai crimini di guerra della NATO (31/12)
- L'IAC sulla recente "scoperta" da parte dei mass-media dei crimini e
della malafede della NATO (12/01)
* SEZIONE AUSTRIACA del Tribunale indipendente:
- Atto d'accusa
- altra documentazione su: http://members.magnet.at/rkl
* International Ethical Alliance (IEA) denounces NATO's bombings
Yugoslavia
* Sulle azioni della magistratura e della popolazione greca contro i
crimini di guerra della NATO segnaliamo:
http://www.arpnet.it/%7eregis/giudicg.htm
http://balkan.pengo.it/documenti/intellettuali_greci.htm
===
>
> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> Statement from the IAC on the UN War Crimes Tribunal's report on NATO
> air strikes
> 31 Dec 1999
> It is only the growing international pressure to indict Bill Clinton and
> other NATO leaders for war crimes against the people of Yugoslavia that
> forced the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for
> the former Yugoslavia to announce the review of possible NATO war
> crimes. But don't expect any indictments of NATO leaders. The
> announcement to review NATO conduct is intended as a cynical white wash
> by a court that was established at the behest of and financed by NATO
> members.
> On Dec. 28, the chief prosecutor for the special War Crimes Tribunal
> based at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, announced she would review a report
> on the conduct of NATO pilots and their commanders during last spring's
> 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The United Nations Security
> Council set up the tribunal in 1993 at the instigation of Madeline
> Albright. It has depended on financial support from NATO countries to
> operate since then, and looks to NATO to enforce its decisions and
> arrest those indicted. This court has no connection to the World Court
> and it has no precedent in international law or in the UN Charter.
> The International Action Center never considered this tribunal to be an
> unbiased or independent court. It was created to do the bidding of the
> Western powers and specifically to discredit the political leadership in
> Yugoslavia and prepare public opinion for war. It was another instrument
> in the aggressive war against Yugoslavia. Most of the charges have been
> brought against Serbs. The indictment of President Slobodan Milosevic
> and other Yugoslav leaders took place while NATO bombs were raining on
> Pristina and other cities and towns in Kosovo, in Belgrade, Novi Sad and
> throughout Yugoslavia.
> The NATO aggressors indicted their victims for war crimes. This has some
> historical precedent. In the early 1940's, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany
> held a sham war crimes trial for French socialist leader Leon Blum. Blum
> and the socialists were blamed for "starting World War II." He and
> millions of others were then deported to concentration camps.
> While none of the media accounts of Del Ponte's announcement expected
> that she would press charges against any individual associated with NATO
> as a result of the report, even to raise such a possibility is a
> profound development. As one report said, "Never has a Western leader or
> military figure been hauled before an international tribunal."
> The International Action Center on July 31, 1999, initiated an
> Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes
> Against the People of Yugoslavia before 700 people in New York. At that
> meeting, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark charged U.S.-NATO
> political and military leaders with 19 counts of war crimes, crimes
> against humanity and crimes against peace.
> Since July there have been dozens of similar hearings held in 10 U.S.
> cities and in Rome, Berlin, Oslo, Paris, Vienna, Novi Sad, Sydney and
> Tokyo, with the most dramatic a "People's Tribunal" on Nov. 8, 1999, in
> Athens, Greece before 10,000 people.
> Others, members of the Russian Duma and respected attorneys from Canada,
> Greece and Britain for example, have participated in the "tribunal
> movement" by attempting to bring evidence before the International
> Criminal Tribunal established by the Security Council at the Hague. They
> have documented NATO's war crimes and demanded that they also be
> investigated. Other attorneys and magistrates in at least Italy and
> Germany have brought charges against their own governments for violating
> constitutional provisions against waging an aggressive war.
> In addition, the mainstream media has finally published several truthful
> accounts of events surrounding the war that expose the NATO powers for
> the worst of the war crimes. These news stories confirm that it was a
> war of aggression and that NATO targeted civilians. These include
> (1) U.S. and other NATO forces provoked the war by setting terms at
> Rambouillet in March 1999 for NATO occupation of all of Yugoslavia that
> the Yugoslav Government could never accept. (Article by Robert Fisk in
> the British daily, The Independent, Nov. 26, 1999). Go to Excerpt
> (2) U.S. generals directing NATO bombing purposely struck civilian
> economic targets in Serbia to bring pressure on the Belgrade government
> to capitulate (Dana Priest in the Washington Post, Sept 19, 20, 21,
> 1999). Go to Excerpt
> (3) The cries of "genocide" NATO politicians used to justify the
> intervention had no basis in fact. U.S. officials said first that
> 500,000 Kosovo Albanians had been killed, then 100,000, then 40,000. Yet
> forensic teams from 17 nations digging in Kosovo 6 months to investigate
> so-called "mass graves" found 2,108 bodies—and these were of all
> nationalities and had died from all causes. (Toronto Star Nov. 4, 1999,
> New York Times, Nov. 10, 1999). Go to Excerpt
> In all, the mounting evidence against U.S.-NATO forces and growing
> pressure to investigate NATO for war crimes has forced the Tribunal
> established by the Security Council to try to at least look less like a
> blatant anti-Yugoslav star chamber.
> While we in the International Action Center have no confidence that the
> International Criminal Tribunal on former Yugoslavia based at The Hague
> will bring the U.S.-NATO war criminals to trial, we take encouragement
> from this additional sign of growing hostility to NATO's aggressive war.
> And we will proceed with our independent tribunal to try the U.S.-NATO
> criminals before a court of world public opinion this coming June 2000.
> IAC co-directors Sara Flounders and Brian Becker and Staff member John
> Catalinotto are available for questions on this statement.
>
>
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
International Action Center
Mainstream Press Reveals Truths about U.S.-NATO Aggression in Yugoslavia
Below are selections from four articles from the mainstream press from
June to November 1999 that indicate that U.S.-NATO forces did indeed (1)
target civilians, (2) provoked the war and thereby committed a planned
aggression against a sovereign state, (3) falsified claims of "genocide"
in order to justify this intervention. A fourth article indicates how
the War Crimes Court in the Hague is itself a tool of NATO. The
newspapers basically supported NATO's war and these articles are
themselves hostile to the Yugoslav government, yet they finally admitted
some truths.
1. Purposely targeted civilians
(From: "Tension Grew With Divide Over Strategy"
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 1999; Page A01
Third of three articles )
Planning for the campaign dated back to June 1998. By the opening night,
strategists had produced 40 versions of an air war, according to Gen.
John P. Jumper, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. Some of these
documents were highly critical of using air power alone, without troops
on the ground to help flush out the enemy. But NATO ultimately settled
on a three-phase air campaign. In Phase I, NATO would strike
antiaircraft defenses and command bunkers. Phase II would extend the
strikes to Yugoslavia's infrastructure below the 44th parallel, well
south of Belgrade. Only in Phase III would the alliance hit targets in
the capital. That was Plan A. There was no Plan B. NATO did not have a
contingency blueprint for a longer campaign, officials now say, because
the Clinton administration and Clark feared that if the alliance's 19
member states were asked to contemplate such a possibility, they would
not agree to begin the war at all. ... Short On March 24, the opening
night of the war, Lt. Gen. Short sat in a darkened room full of computer
screens, the Combined Air Operations Center at Vicenza Air Base in
Italy. Yellow, green and red tadpole-shaped symbols moved across large
electronic maps on the walls, representing all the enemy and NATO
aircraft over Yugoslavia. As Short waited for the first missiles to
strike, he clenched his jaw and kept his silence, a self-control that
some subordinates noted and admired. The three-star general with a
drilling blue stare and gruff manner had argued many times to his
superiors that the most effective tactic for the first night of the war
would be a knockout punch to Belgrade's power stations and government
ministries. ns. Clark Clark also harbored doubts about the initial
plan's meager size. But after a year of coaxing the allies, he felt this
was the biggest and best operation he could get NATO to approve. He also
believed there was a 40 percent chance that the war would end within
three days, since Milosevic might just be looking for an excuse to
withdraw from Kosovo. ....
"From the very beginning, Clark changed the strategy," says a European
diplomat in Brussels. "He quickly decided to strike on a broader
geographic scale and, second, to strike a different type of target. . .
. It made us worried about the political risks, the political impact."
...While the allies were hesitating to approve strikes on Belgrade,
however, Air Force commanders were unhappy about searching for tanks and
troops in Kosovo. Body Language "There was a fundamental difference of
opinion at the outset between General Clark, who was applying a ground
commander's perspective . . . and General Short as to the value of going
after fielded forces," says Vice Adm. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., who was
commander of all naval forces aligned against Yugoslavia.
...In the Air Force magazine interview, Short said that Clark urged him
even before the conflict started to "get down amongst" Yugoslav armored
vehicles and troops in the field. Eventually, he said, "we, the airmen
of the alliance, were able to convince General Clark" of a need to
conduct sustained operations against "more lucrative and compelling
targets . . . in Serbia proper." (IAC's emphasis) No Pause Clark says he
didn't need any convincing about strategic targets, but he wanted to
strike Serbian forces in Kosovo, as well. Meanwhile, he was fending off
proposals from the political leaders of some NATO
countries—particularly Italy and Greece—who wanted to suspend the
bombing altogether. Clark's frustration with the alliance's timidity was
reflected in a video conference on March 27. These live, highly secure
communication links replaced the crackly field telephones and urgent
cables of previous wars. They were part theater, say some of the people
who sat through them, with a dozen large personalities on the stage.
NATO must strike "as many targets as we can each night," said Clark,
seated at the head of a classroom-style conference room, staring at a
television screen hanging from the ceiling. "I don't want to let the
perception get started that we're not doing much, so we can have a
pause." ...Yet, in the end, Clark pushed hard for approval to go after
exactly the kind of targets that the Air Force wanted. And it was then
that his political acumen proved useful. Aim Points ...On March 30, day
seven of the war, the North Atlantic Council debated Clark's request but
made no decision. Instead, the council left Solana with the job of
interpreting its wishes. A few days later, he gave the go-ahead. By
winning approval for continuing strikes on Belgrade as well as Kosovo,
Clark finally brought the allies and the Air Force together, creating
the broader war that led Milosevic to capitulate. But military
historians, air power strategists and budding commanders at war colleges
will long debate the merits of Short's position vs. Clark's. Last week,
Clark released some long-awaited figures on the Kosovo campaign: Allied
warplanes destroyed or damaged 93 tanks, 153 armored personnel carriers,
339 military vehicles and 389 artillery pieces and mortars. Those
numbers represent only about one-third of all the weaponry and vehicles
that the Yugoslav army had in Kosovo; two-thirds survived intact. To
those in Short's camp, this is strong evidence that the war was won by
strategic bombing of Serbia proper, where NATO damaged or destroyed 24
bridges, 12 railway stations, 36 factories, seven airports, 16 fuel
plants and storage depots, 17 television transmitters and several
electrical facilities, according to a Yugoslav government report. Clark
is not swayed. He argues that Yugoslavia was defeated by steady losses
both in Kosovo and in the rest of Serbia, combined with diplomatic
pressure and the threat of an allied invasion. The air campaign "was an
effort to coerce, not to seize," said Clark. "It only made good sense
that at some point, if [Milosevic] continued to lose and we didn't, that
he would throw in the towel. But we could never predict how long he
would hold on because it wasn't a function of any specific set of
losses. It was a function of variables that were beyond our
predictions—ultimately, his state of mind."
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
2. U.S. provoked war
FROM THIS ARTICLE ON RAMBOUILLET PART B, PUBLISHED NOV. 26 IN THE
BRITISH NEWSPAPER THE INDEPENDENT, WITH THE HEADLINE "THE TROJAN HORSE
THAT 'STARTED' A 79-DAY WAR" ---
By Robert Fisk in Belgrade
In the last days of the Paris peace talks on Yugoslavia last March,
something extraordinary happened. The Serb delegation - after agreeing
to a political revolution in Kosovo - was presented with a military
appendix to the treaty which demanded the virtual Nato occupation of all
Yugoslavia.
The Serbs turned it down and Nato went to war. Yet 79 days later, Nato -
which had refused to contemplate a change in the military document -
lost all interest in the annexe and at the final dramatic meetings on
the Macedonian border was content with a Nato force inside only Kosovo.
Official obfuscation and confusion has ever since surrounded this
all-important, last-minute addition to the Paris "peace" agreement. Was
it presented by the Americans to force President Slobodan Milosevic to
reject the whole peace package and permit Nato to bomb Serbia?...
The full annexes demanded Nato rights of road, rail and air passage
across all of Yugoslavia, the use of radio stations, even the waiving of
any claims of damages against Nato. For any state - even one as
grotesque as Serbia - this would have amounted to occupation.
The Foreign Minister of France, Hubert Védrine, said the military
appendix was similar to that used by Nato when it moved troops into
Bosnia and that Nato forces needed access to Kosovo through Belgrade.
But he has never explained why this supposedly essential part of the
treaty was abandoned once Nato troops moved into the province.
Milan Komnenic, who was the Yugoslav Federal Information minister and a
member of Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (then in government
but soon to be in opposition), was in Paris during the talks and has
become preoccupied with the military annexe. He is writing a book about
the negotiations, The Trap of Rambouillet.....
According to Mr Komnenic, the American negotiator Christopher Hill and
the Austrian diplomat at the talks, Boris [Wolfgang—IAC] Petritsch,
insisted on the annexe while the Russian negotiator, Boris Mayorski -
who later refused to attend the Kosovo Albanian signing of the "peace"
agreement - abstained. "Hill and Petritsch were 'for' the annexe and
[Robin] Cook and Védrine apparently agreed with a version - not
identical to the final annexe - which was called an 'explanation' of the
political agreement and which said there could be no implementation with
a Nato presence only in Kosovo," Mr Komnenic said. .... United Nations
Security Council resolution 1244 [which ended the conflict] could have
been accepted before the bombing."
In any event, when Nato commanders met the Serbs for the
"military-technical agreement" at the end of the war - after thousands
of Kosovo Albanians had been murdered by Serb forces and as many as
1,500 civilians killed by Nato bombs - the supposedly crucial military
annexe was never mentioned. Miraculously, Nato - with 40,000 troops to
move into the province (10,000 more than originally envisaged) - no
longer needed appendix B. Not a single Nato soldier moved north of
Kosovo into the rest of Serbia. What was the real purpose of Nato's last
minute demand? Was it a Trojan horse? To save the peace? Or to sabotage
it? (END)
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
3. U.S. lied to justify war
>>From Nov.3, Toronto Star (a similar article appeared in the Nov. 11 New
York Times)
"No genocide, no justification for war on Kosovo"
IN THE GENOCIDE of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by the forces of Serb
leader Slobodan Milosevic, the worst incident occurred at the Trepca
mine. As reported by American and NATO officials, large numbers of
bodies were brought in by trucks under the cover of darkness. The bodies
were then thrown down the shafts, or were disposed of entirely in the
mine's vats of hydrochloric acid. Estimates of the number of dead began
at 1,000. That was six months ago, in the middle of the war undertaken
to halt what both U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair called "a human catastrophe." Estimates of the number of
ethnic Albanians slaughtered went upward from 10,000. U.S. Defence
Secretary William Cohen put the count at 100,000. Three weeks ago, the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia released the
findings of Western forensic teams investigating the horror at Trepca.
There were not 1,000 bodies down the mine shafts at Trepca, reported the
tribunal. There were not 100 bodies there. There was not one body there,
nor was there any evidence the vats had ever been used to dispose of
human remains. Shortly afterward, the tribunal reported on its work at
the most infamous of all the mass graves of ethnic Albanians, at
Ljubenic near the town of Pec. Earlier, NATO officials had said 350
victims had been hastily buried there by the retreating Serb forces.
There were not 350 bodies at Ljubenic, though. There were five. So far,
not one mass grave has been found in Kosovo, despite four months' work
by forensic teams, including experts from the FBI and the RCMP. This
discovery - more accurately, this non-discovery - first was made public
three weeks ago by the Texas-based intelligence think tank, Stratfor.
Stratfor estimated the number of ethnic Albanian dead in Kosovo at 500.
Last weekend, the story was broadcast for the first time by the TV
Ontario program Diplomatic Immunity. (Last Sunday's New York Times was
still using the "10,000 deaths" figure.) The story has begun to appear
in European newspapers. Spain's El Pais has quoted the head of the
Spanish forensic team, Emilo Pujol, as saying he had resigned because,
after being told to expect to have to carry out 2,000 autopsies, he'd
only had 97 bodies to examine - none of which "showed any signs of
mutilation or torture." Because 250 of 400 suspected mass graves in
Kosovo remain to be examined, it's possible that evidence of mass
killings will yet be found. This is highly unlikely though, because the
worst sites were dug up first. No genocide of ethnic Albanians by Serbs,
therefore. No "human catastrophe." No "modern-day Holocaust." All of
those claims may have been an honest mistake. Equally, they may have
been a grotesque lie concocted to justify a war that NATO originally
assumed would be over in a day or two, with Milosevic using the excuse
of some minimal damage as a cover for a surrender, but then had to fight
(at great expense) for months. There's no question that atrocities were
committed in Kosovo, overwhelmingly by the Serb forces, although the
ethnic Albanian guerrillas were not innocent. Quite obviously, these
forces, acting on Milosevic's explicit orders, carried out mass
expulsions of people, terrorizing them and destroying their homes and
property. Acts like these are inexcusable. That they occur often in
civil wars (far worse are being committed by the Russians in Chechnya),
is irrelevant to their horror. But they have nothing to do with
genocide. No genocide means no justification for a war inflicted by NATO
on a sovereign nation. Only a certainty of imminent genocide could have
legally justified a war that was not even discussed by the U.N. Security
Council. No genocide means that the tribunal's indictment of Milosevic
becomes highly questionable. Even more questionable is the West's
continued punishment of the Serbs - the Danube bridges and the power
stations remain in ruins - when their offence may well have been
stupidity rather than criminality. The absence of genocide may mean
something else, something deeply shaming. To halt the supposed genocide,
NATO bombed targets in Serbia proper. Because of "collateral" or
accidental damage, such as the bombing of a train, some 500 civilians
were killed (Belgrade claims almost 1,000 deaths). NATO very likely
killed as many people as were killed in Kosovo. The number of these dead
isn't large enough to justify NATO's actions being called a "human
catastrophe." But, unless proof of genocide can be produced, NATO's
actions were clearly a moral catastrophe.
Richard Gwyn's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday in The Star
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
Here's a comment on the War crimes Tribunal in the Hague: From the
London Times, June 18, 1999
"This is not victors' justice in the former Yugoslavia in fact, it is no
justice at all."
By John Laughland
Emotion may be a spur to justice, but it is rarely its guarantor. The
allegations of war crimes eagerly funnelled out of Kosovo by the
thousands of journalists in the province have provoked a demand for
retribution. That cry for justice is natural. But the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the body charged with
pursuing those accused of war crimes in Kosovo, is a rogue court with
rigged rules....
The International Criminal Tribunal shows little sign of caring that
NATO has itself broken nearly every rule of war, or that the peace deal
concluded with Belgrade is null and void in international law, since
Yugoslavia's signature was obtained by force. Instead, it displays
considerable contempt for the very thing which distinguishes the rule of
law from retributive justice, namely due process....
Although it is a key requirement for due process that a defendant be
tried by a body "established by law", the Security Council is not a
law-making body. Faced with the allegation that it had no legitimacy,
the tribunal did not refer the matter to another body, such as the
International Court of Justice, but instead decided to deal with the
charge itself. Not surprisingly, it found in its own favour....
The tribunal gives itself powers as it goes along. Louise Arbour, the
recently departed Chief Prosecutor, has said: "The law, to me, should be
creative and used to make things tight," and the tribunal dips into a
potpourri of different legal systems from around the world. In one case,
the tribunal defended itself against charges that it had illegally
seized documents from the Bosnian Government by saying that its
procedures were compatible with the law in Paraguay. General Stroessner
evidently has a place in the tribunal's judicial pantheon alongside Sir
Edward Coke and William Blackstone.
As if this were not enough, the tribunal is not funded by disinterested
parties, but by those who waged or supported the attacks on Yugoslavia.
These include the leading NATO governments (especially the United
States) and various non- governmental organisations like George Soros's
Open Society Institute, whose head of office in Kosovo is a militant
supporter of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Might, it seems, is always right. Just ask the NATO spokesman Jamie
Shea. On May 17, he was asked whether NATO leaders could ever be
indicted by the tribunal. "As you know," he replied, "without NATO
countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would
there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have
established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who
support on a daily basis their activities."
This is not victors' justice it is no justice at all.
posted: 1/12/00
war crimes
inquiry press releases
===
Vorbereitungskomitee
Wiener Tribunal
Wir erheben politische Anklage gegen
Bundeskanzler Mag. Viktor Klima
Vizekanzler und Außenminister Dr. Wolfgang Schüssel
Verteidigungsminister Dr. Werner Fasslabend
Ehem. EU-Sonderbeauftragten Dr. Wolfgang Petritsch, dzt. Hoher
Repräsentant
für Bosnien
Außenminister a.D. Dr. Alois Mock
Wegen Unterstützung und Befürwortung des Angriffskriegs der NATO gegen
die
Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien. Wegen offener Parteinahme in einem
Bürgerkrieg,
politisch, wirtschaftlich und logistisch, als auch mit Söldnern.
Wegen des Verdachts der Verletzung der völkerrechtlich verankerten
immerwährenden Neutralität Österreichs, indem Verpflichtungen über das
Verhalten eines immerwährend neutralen Staates, sich in jedem Falle,
auch in
Friedenszeiten, so zu verhalten, daß keine Begünstigung einer
Konfliktseite
herausgelesen werden kann, nicht eingehalten wurden.
Wegen des Verdachts von stattgefundenen Überflügen durch Flugzeuge der
NATO-Luftwaffen zur Zeit des Krieges gegen Jugoslawien, die, obwohl in
diesem Fall von Österreich nicht genehmigt, nach Aufschlüssen der
österr.
Luftverkehrskontrolle massiv zugenommen haben, wobei nicht bekannt ist,
wie
viele davon evtl. bewaffnet zur Unterstützung des Luftkrieges der NATO
stattgefunden haben und welche Protestmaßnahmen von Seiten
österreichischer
Organe ergriffen wurden. Ebenso wegen schon lange vorher wiederholt
getätigter Durchfahrten von NATO-Fahrzeugen nach Stützpunkten in Ungarn,
von
denen angenommen werden kann, daß nicht nur "humanitäre" Transporte
vorlagen.
Wegen des Verdachts der Weitergabe von Erkenntnissen, welchen
Wahrheitsgehaltes auch immer, geheimdienstlicher Art über Aktivitäten
auf
dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien durch österreichische Stellen
an
v.a. westliche bzw. NATO-Dienste, wodurch Verletzungen der
Neutralitätsverpflichtungen Österreichs angenommen werden können.
Wegen des Verdachts der Begünstigung bzw. Unterstützung des Bruchs des
Verbotes der Führung eines "ökologischen Krieges" durch die NATO (d.i.
Bombardierung von Erdölraffinerien, chemischen Fabriken und anderen, bei
Beschädigung oder Zerstörung negative Umweltfolgen zeitigenden
Einrichtungen, lokal wie auch regional), sowie des Einsatzes verbotener
Waffen (Cluster-bombs, d.i. Streubomben, und Munition ummantelt mit
abgereichertem Uran, Depleted Uranium, DU).
Wegen des Verdachts der Begünstigung einer Aggressionshandlung der
Nordatlantischen Vertragsorganisation, die, sich selbst mandatierend,
ohne
einen Beschluß oder die Beauftragung durch den UN-Sicherheitsrat und
entgegen allen anderen eingegangenen völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen
zum
Gewaltverzicht in den internationalen Beziehungen und den Beziehungen
der
Staaten untereinander, einen Angriffskrieg gegen das Territorium eines
souveränen Staates geführt hat und darüberhinaus auch ihre eigene
Vertragsgrundlage verletzte.
Wegen des Verdachts der Zustimmung zu einer daraus folgenden "neuen
Weltordnung", in der ein dauernd beschworenes Recht auf "humanitäre
Interventionen" von der Nordatlantischen Vertragsorganisation (NATO) mit
Waffengewalt und dem Rückhalt der größten militärischen Mächte global
durchgesetzt werden soll.
Wegen des Verdachts des Hintanhaltens von Durchsetzung
nicht-militärischer
und gewaltfreier Konfliktlösungsmöglichkeiten, wie in der Verhinderung
von
Aufgaben der OSZE auch durch das neutrale Österreich, etwa durch einen
nicht
nachvollziehbaren Abzugsbefehl, durch die Auslieferung des Mandats an
einen
Beauftragten wie den US-Diplomaten William Walker, durch den nicht
vorhandenen Widerstand der Bundesregierung gegen den - mißbräuchlichen -
Einsatz der OSZE bei der strategischen Vorbereitung des Krieges gegen
Jugoslawien sowie durch die nicht vorhandenen Bemühungen der
Bundesregierung
den Status der Suspendierung der Bundesrepublik Jugoslwawien in der
Organisation aufzuheben, um Bemühungen für Verhandlungslösungen zu
begünstigen.
Wegen des Verdachts des Inkaufnehmens des vorhersehbaren Scheiterns der
sog.
Friedensverhandlungen von Paris und Rambouillet, die auf den
erpresserischen
und auf ein Besetzungsdiktat hinauslaufenden, erst später der
Öffentlichkeit
bekannt gewordenen, angefügten Annex B, einem als Ultimatum zu
bewertenden
Zusatz, der schlußendlich zur conditio sine qua non erklärt wurde,
eskaliert
wurden, wobei nach völkerrechtlichen Maßstäben ein Vertrag, der unter
dem
Zwang eines faktischen Ultimatums zustande käme, per se ungültig wäre.
Wegen des Verdachts der wiederholten Inkaufnahme wenn nicht Begünstigung
der
Zerschlagung der damaligen souveränen SFR Jugoslawien durch
Unterstützung,
Zustimmung und Vorwegnahme einer, v.a. durch bzw. in Verbindung mit der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland vorangetriebenen, Anerkennungspolitik der
Sezession von Teilrepubliken der damaligen SFR Jugoslawien.
Wegen des Verdachts zumindest der Duldung von verhetzender
Berichterstattung
v.a. gegenüber dem serbischen Bevölkerungsteil der Bundesrepublik
Jugoslawien, insbesondere in Medien öffentlichen Rechts. Sowohl wegen
des
Verdachts der Berichterstattung gegenüber Serbien wie auch der
Aufhetzung
von Volksgruppen gegeneinander auf dem Territorium der Bundesrepublik
Jugoslawien und nicht erfolgten Eingriffen bzw. Richtigstellungen der
österr. Bundesregierung, wobei dadurch das Verhalten eines immerwährend
neutralen Staates ebenfalls in Frage gestellt wurde.
Aufgrund dieser Verdachtsmomente verlangen die VertreterInnen des
Vorbereitungskomitees des Wiener Tribunals eine Anklage der österr.
Bundesregierung bzw. der ob. angef. namentlich genannten Personen durch
das
Wiener Tribunal am 4. Dezember 1999 wegen Begünstigung und Unterstützung
des
NATO-Angriffskrieges gegen die BR Jugoslawien.
Eine etwaige Verurteilung soll dem Internationalen Tribunal, vertreten
durch
Mr. Ramsey Clark, für die Generalanklage vor dem Internationalen
Gerichtshof
in Den Haag zur Verfügung gestellt werden.
===
STOP NATO: !NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>IEA War Crimes Indictment Had Claimed Conflict of Interest
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
>By REVEREND CANON KENNETH GUNN-WALBERG
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
[Excerpted from an address before the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan
Studies and the Centre for Peace in the Balkans (Toronto) 10/31/99]
I am speaking today in my capacity as President of the International
Ethical
Alliance (IEA) -- which denounces NATO's bombings of Yugoslavia. IEA is
a
United States non-profit organization committed to enhancing ethics in
government
On July 8, 1999 IEA filed a formal indictment with the International
Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia charging President Clinton and others
with
War Crimes against the people of Serbia. The indictment was drafted by
the
Chairman of our Board of Directors, Jerome M. Zeifman.
"Jerry" (of whom I am a quasi-father confessor) is a life-long Democrat.
(I
am not.) At the time of the Nixon impeachment inquiry he served as Chief
Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. As was first reported by
Insight
Magazine, and then by Matt Drudge on Fox TV, the indictment IEA filed
with
the ICTY has five prongs.
First, it charges defendants Clinton, Cohen, and other leaders of NATO
countries with "non-defensive aggressive military attacks on Yugoslavia,
which have not been necessary to defend the national security of the
United
States ... and are proscribed inter alia in the Charter of the
International
Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Aug. 8, 1945, and the 1947 Charter of the
United Nations.
Second, it relies on specified evidence and expert testimony from
witnesses
whom IEA wants the Tribunal to summon, "including but not limited to:
former
U.S. President Jimmy Carter; former Nuremberg prosecutor for the United
States, Walter Rockler; Bishop Artemious of Kosovo; journalist Alexander
Cockburn; and playwright Harold Pinter."
Third, it charges, "There is substantial evidence of conduct by [then]
prosecutor Louise Arbour that warrants her disqualification, including
but
not limited to: (i) the engaging in selective prosecution by
intentionally
failing to consider and act on evidence which incriminates defendants
Clinton
and Cohen, and other as yet unindicted officials of NATO countries; (ii)
conflicts of interest, or the appearance thereof, in receiving
compensation
from funds contributed to the Tribunal in whole or in part by
governments of
NATO; and (iii) bias in favor of the attacks by NATO on former
Yugoslavia."
Fourth, it calls for, "The appointment of an independent prosecutor who:
(i)
is not a citizen or permanent resident of a NATO country; (ii) is
compensated
only from funds specifically contributed by non-NATO countries; and
(iii) has
an independent staff that is not compensated directly or indirectly from
funds contributed by NATO countries.
Fifth, of the Tribunal's fourteen justices, it calls for the
disqualification
for conflicts of interest of five justices representing NATO countries,
including chief justice Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States
I am pleased today to inform you that (as was also first reported by
Insight
Magazine) IEA's indictment has already had a modicum of success. Of the
five
Tribunal members for whose disqualification IEA had petitioned, by now
three
have resigned before the expiration of their terms.
On September 6, 1999, Justice Antonio Cassese of Italy (whose term was
not up
until 17 November 2001) announced his retirement and plans to resume an
academic career at Florence University.
On September 15, Louise Arbour resigned. She has been appointed to the
Canadian Supreme Court. Many Canadian critics of Prime Minister Chretien
have
opposed her appointment -- and consider it as a reward for suppressing
evidence of Chretien's and Clinton's war crimes in the bombing of
Yugoslavia
As Arbour's replacement, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed
Carla
Del Ponte, a former Attorney General of Switzerland. Based on her prior
record for professional integrity and traditional Swiss neutrality in
military affairs she appears to Mr. Zeifman to be qualified.
As of November 17 the Tribunal's Chief Justice McDonald will be also
vacating
her unexpired term. As her replacement, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
has
appointed Patricia Wald, currently a Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia. Jerry Zeifman is particularly
pleased
by Kofi Annan's appointment of Justice Wald -- of whose prior career he
has
some personal knowledge. She had served as Assistant Attorney General
during the Carter administration. Carter eventually appointed her to a
federal Judgeship.
[Canon Gunn-Walberg is a Canadian and an Anglican Catholic Priest now
residing in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania
Membership in IEA is free and includes a subscription to an email
news letter. Persons who wish to receive more information may phone or
fax
Canon Gunn-Walberg at 814 342 0224 or send email to jzeifman@....
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
------------------------------------------------------------
- Presa di posizione dell'IAC sull'apparente interessamento del
Tribunale dell'Aia ai crimini di guerra della NATO (31/12)
- L'IAC sulla recente "scoperta" da parte dei mass-media dei crimini e
della malafede della NATO (12/01)
* SEZIONE AUSTRIACA del Tribunale indipendente:
- Atto d'accusa
- altra documentazione su: http://members.magnet.at/rkl
* International Ethical Alliance (IEA) denounces NATO's bombings
Yugoslavia
* Sulle azioni della magistratura e della popolazione greca contro i
crimini di guerra della NATO segnaliamo:
http://www.arpnet.it/%7eregis/giudicg.htm
http://balkan.pengo.it/documenti/intellettuali_greci.htm
===
>
> STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>
> Statement from the IAC on the UN War Crimes Tribunal's report on NATO
> air strikes
> 31 Dec 1999
> It is only the growing international pressure to indict Bill Clinton and
> other NATO leaders for war crimes against the people of Yugoslavia that
> forced the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for
> the former Yugoslavia to announce the review of possible NATO war
> crimes. But don't expect any indictments of NATO leaders. The
> announcement to review NATO conduct is intended as a cynical white wash
> by a court that was established at the behest of and financed by NATO
> members.
> On Dec. 28, the chief prosecutor for the special War Crimes Tribunal
> based at the Hague, Carla Del Ponte, announced she would review a report
> on the conduct of NATO pilots and their commanders during last spring's
> 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. The United Nations Security
> Council set up the tribunal in 1993 at the instigation of Madeline
> Albright. It has depended on financial support from NATO countries to
> operate since then, and looks to NATO to enforce its decisions and
> arrest those indicted. This court has no connection to the World Court
> and it has no precedent in international law or in the UN Charter.
> The International Action Center never considered this tribunal to be an
> unbiased or independent court. It was created to do the bidding of the
> Western powers and specifically to discredit the political leadership in
> Yugoslavia and prepare public opinion for war. It was another instrument
> in the aggressive war against Yugoslavia. Most of the charges have been
> brought against Serbs. The indictment of President Slobodan Milosevic
> and other Yugoslav leaders took place while NATO bombs were raining on
> Pristina and other cities and towns in Kosovo, in Belgrade, Novi Sad and
> throughout Yugoslavia.
> The NATO aggressors indicted their victims for war crimes. This has some
> historical precedent. In the early 1940's, Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany
> held a sham war crimes trial for French socialist leader Leon Blum. Blum
> and the socialists were blamed for "starting World War II." He and
> millions of others were then deported to concentration camps.
> While none of the media accounts of Del Ponte's announcement expected
> that she would press charges against any individual associated with NATO
> as a result of the report, even to raise such a possibility is a
> profound development. As one report said, "Never has a Western leader or
> military figure been hauled before an international tribunal."
> The International Action Center on July 31, 1999, initiated an
> Independent Commission of Inquiry to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes
> Against the People of Yugoslavia before 700 people in New York. At that
> meeting, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark charged U.S.-NATO
> political and military leaders with 19 counts of war crimes, crimes
> against humanity and crimes against peace.
> Since July there have been dozens of similar hearings held in 10 U.S.
> cities and in Rome, Berlin, Oslo, Paris, Vienna, Novi Sad, Sydney and
> Tokyo, with the most dramatic a "People's Tribunal" on Nov. 8, 1999, in
> Athens, Greece before 10,000 people.
> Others, members of the Russian Duma and respected attorneys from Canada,
> Greece and Britain for example, have participated in the "tribunal
> movement" by attempting to bring evidence before the International
> Criminal Tribunal established by the Security Council at the Hague. They
> have documented NATO's war crimes and demanded that they also be
> investigated. Other attorneys and magistrates in at least Italy and
> Germany have brought charges against their own governments for violating
> constitutional provisions against waging an aggressive war.
> In addition, the mainstream media has finally published several truthful
> accounts of events surrounding the war that expose the NATO powers for
> the worst of the war crimes. These news stories confirm that it was a
> war of aggression and that NATO targeted civilians. These include
> (1) U.S. and other NATO forces provoked the war by setting terms at
> Rambouillet in March 1999 for NATO occupation of all of Yugoslavia that
> the Yugoslav Government could never accept. (Article by Robert Fisk in
> the British daily, The Independent, Nov. 26, 1999). Go to Excerpt
> (2) U.S. generals directing NATO bombing purposely struck civilian
> economic targets in Serbia to bring pressure on the Belgrade government
> to capitulate (Dana Priest in the Washington Post, Sept 19, 20, 21,
> 1999). Go to Excerpt
> (3) The cries of "genocide" NATO politicians used to justify the
> intervention had no basis in fact. U.S. officials said first that
> 500,000 Kosovo Albanians had been killed, then 100,000, then 40,000. Yet
> forensic teams from 17 nations digging in Kosovo 6 months to investigate
> so-called "mass graves" found 2,108 bodies—and these were of all
> nationalities and had died from all causes. (Toronto Star Nov. 4, 1999,
> New York Times, Nov. 10, 1999). Go to Excerpt
> In all, the mounting evidence against U.S.-NATO forces and growing
> pressure to investigate NATO for war crimes has forced the Tribunal
> established by the Security Council to try to at least look less like a
> blatant anti-Yugoslav star chamber.
> While we in the International Action Center have no confidence that the
> International Criminal Tribunal on former Yugoslavia based at The Hague
> will bring the U.S.-NATO war criminals to trial, we take encouragement
> from this additional sign of growing hostility to NATO's aggressive war.
> And we will proceed with our independent tribunal to try the U.S.-NATO
> criminals before a court of world public opinion this coming June 2000.
> IAC co-directors Sara Flounders and Brian Becker and Staff member John
> Catalinotto are available for questions on this statement.
>
>
STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
International Action Center
Mainstream Press Reveals Truths about U.S.-NATO Aggression in Yugoslavia
Below are selections from four articles from the mainstream press from
June to November 1999 that indicate that U.S.-NATO forces did indeed (1)
target civilians, (2) provoked the war and thereby committed a planned
aggression against a sovereign state, (3) falsified claims of "genocide"
in order to justify this intervention. A fourth article indicates how
the War Crimes Court in the Hague is itself a tool of NATO. The
newspapers basically supported NATO's war and these articles are
themselves hostile to the Yugoslav government, yet they finally admitted
some truths.
1. Purposely targeted civilians
(From: "Tension Grew With Divide Over Strategy"
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 1999; Page A01
Third of three articles )
Planning for the campaign dated back to June 1998. By the opening night,
strategists had produced 40 versions of an air war, according to Gen.
John P. Jumper, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. Some of these
documents were highly critical of using air power alone, without troops
on the ground to help flush out the enemy. But NATO ultimately settled
on a three-phase air campaign. In Phase I, NATO would strike
antiaircraft defenses and command bunkers. Phase II would extend the
strikes to Yugoslavia's infrastructure below the 44th parallel, well
south of Belgrade. Only in Phase III would the alliance hit targets in
the capital. That was Plan A. There was no Plan B. NATO did not have a
contingency blueprint for a longer campaign, officials now say, because
the Clinton administration and Clark feared that if the alliance's 19
member states were asked to contemplate such a possibility, they would
not agree to begin the war at all. ... Short On March 24, the opening
night of the war, Lt. Gen. Short sat in a darkened room full of computer
screens, the Combined Air Operations Center at Vicenza Air Base in
Italy. Yellow, green and red tadpole-shaped symbols moved across large
electronic maps on the walls, representing all the enemy and NATO
aircraft over Yugoslavia. As Short waited for the first missiles to
strike, he clenched his jaw and kept his silence, a self-control that
some subordinates noted and admired. The three-star general with a
drilling blue stare and gruff manner had argued many times to his
superiors that the most effective tactic for the first night of the war
would be a knockout punch to Belgrade's power stations and government
ministries. ns. Clark Clark also harbored doubts about the initial
plan's meager size. But after a year of coaxing the allies, he felt this
was the biggest and best operation he could get NATO to approve. He also
believed there was a 40 percent chance that the war would end within
three days, since Milosevic might just be looking for an excuse to
withdraw from Kosovo. ....
"From the very beginning, Clark changed the strategy," says a European
diplomat in Brussels. "He quickly decided to strike on a broader
geographic scale and, second, to strike a different type of target. . .
. It made us worried about the political risks, the political impact."
...While the allies were hesitating to approve strikes on Belgrade,
however, Air Force commanders were unhappy about searching for tanks and
troops in Kosovo. Body Language "There was a fundamental difference of
opinion at the outset between General Clark, who was applying a ground
commander's perspective . . . and General Short as to the value of going
after fielded forces," says Vice Adm. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., who was
commander of all naval forces aligned against Yugoslavia.
...In the Air Force magazine interview, Short said that Clark urged him
even before the conflict started to "get down amongst" Yugoslav armored
vehicles and troops in the field. Eventually, he said, "we, the airmen
of the alliance, were able to convince General Clark" of a need to
conduct sustained operations against "more lucrative and compelling
targets . . . in Serbia proper." (IAC's emphasis) No Pause Clark says he
didn't need any convincing about strategic targets, but he wanted to
strike Serbian forces in Kosovo, as well. Meanwhile, he was fending off
proposals from the political leaders of some NATO
countries—particularly Italy and Greece—who wanted to suspend the
bombing altogether. Clark's frustration with the alliance's timidity was
reflected in a video conference on March 27. These live, highly secure
communication links replaced the crackly field telephones and urgent
cables of previous wars. They were part theater, say some of the people
who sat through them, with a dozen large personalities on the stage.
NATO must strike "as many targets as we can each night," said Clark,
seated at the head of a classroom-style conference room, staring at a
television screen hanging from the ceiling. "I don't want to let the
perception get started that we're not doing much, so we can have a
pause." ...Yet, in the end, Clark pushed hard for approval to go after
exactly the kind of targets that the Air Force wanted. And it was then
that his political acumen proved useful. Aim Points ...On March 30, day
seven of the war, the North Atlantic Council debated Clark's request but
made no decision. Instead, the council left Solana with the job of
interpreting its wishes. A few days later, he gave the go-ahead. By
winning approval for continuing strikes on Belgrade as well as Kosovo,
Clark finally brought the allies and the Air Force together, creating
the broader war that led Milosevic to capitulate. But military
historians, air power strategists and budding commanders at war colleges
will long debate the merits of Short's position vs. Clark's. Last week,
Clark released some long-awaited figures on the Kosovo campaign: Allied
warplanes destroyed or damaged 93 tanks, 153 armored personnel carriers,
339 military vehicles and 389 artillery pieces and mortars. Those
numbers represent only about one-third of all the weaponry and vehicles
that the Yugoslav army had in Kosovo; two-thirds survived intact. To
those in Short's camp, this is strong evidence that the war was won by
strategic bombing of Serbia proper, where NATO damaged or destroyed 24
bridges, 12 railway stations, 36 factories, seven airports, 16 fuel
plants and storage depots, 17 television transmitters and several
electrical facilities, according to a Yugoslav government report. Clark
is not swayed. He argues that Yugoslavia was defeated by steady losses
both in Kosovo and in the rest of Serbia, combined with diplomatic
pressure and the threat of an allied invasion. The air campaign "was an
effort to coerce, not to seize," said Clark. "It only made good sense
that at some point, if [Milosevic] continued to lose and we didn't, that
he would throw in the towel. But we could never predict how long he
would hold on because it wasn't a function of any specific set of
losses. It was a function of variables that were beyond our
predictions—ultimately, his state of mind."
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
2. U.S. provoked war
FROM THIS ARTICLE ON RAMBOUILLET PART B, PUBLISHED NOV. 26 IN THE
BRITISH NEWSPAPER THE INDEPENDENT, WITH THE HEADLINE "THE TROJAN HORSE
THAT 'STARTED' A 79-DAY WAR" ---
By Robert Fisk in Belgrade
In the last days of the Paris peace talks on Yugoslavia last March,
something extraordinary happened. The Serb delegation - after agreeing
to a political revolution in Kosovo - was presented with a military
appendix to the treaty which demanded the virtual Nato occupation of all
Yugoslavia.
The Serbs turned it down and Nato went to war. Yet 79 days later, Nato -
which had refused to contemplate a change in the military document -
lost all interest in the annexe and at the final dramatic meetings on
the Macedonian border was content with a Nato force inside only Kosovo.
Official obfuscation and confusion has ever since surrounded this
all-important, last-minute addition to the Paris "peace" agreement. Was
it presented by the Americans to force President Slobodan Milosevic to
reject the whole peace package and permit Nato to bomb Serbia?...
The full annexes demanded Nato rights of road, rail and air passage
across all of Yugoslavia, the use of radio stations, even the waiving of
any claims of damages against Nato. For any state - even one as
grotesque as Serbia - this would have amounted to occupation.
The Foreign Minister of France, Hubert Védrine, said the military
appendix was similar to that used by Nato when it moved troops into
Bosnia and that Nato forces needed access to Kosovo through Belgrade.
But he has never explained why this supposedly essential part of the
treaty was abandoned once Nato troops moved into the province.
Milan Komnenic, who was the Yugoslav Federal Information minister and a
member of Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement (then in government
but soon to be in opposition), was in Paris during the talks and has
become preoccupied with the military annexe. He is writing a book about
the negotiations, The Trap of Rambouillet.....
According to Mr Komnenic, the American negotiator Christopher Hill and
the Austrian diplomat at the talks, Boris [Wolfgang—IAC] Petritsch,
insisted on the annexe while the Russian negotiator, Boris Mayorski -
who later refused to attend the Kosovo Albanian signing of the "peace"
agreement - abstained. "Hill and Petritsch were 'for' the annexe and
[Robin] Cook and Védrine apparently agreed with a version - not
identical to the final annexe - which was called an 'explanation' of the
political agreement and which said there could be no implementation with
a Nato presence only in Kosovo," Mr Komnenic said. .... United Nations
Security Council resolution 1244 [which ended the conflict] could have
been accepted before the bombing."
In any event, when Nato commanders met the Serbs for the
"military-technical agreement" at the end of the war - after thousands
of Kosovo Albanians had been murdered by Serb forces and as many as
1,500 civilians killed by Nato bombs - the supposedly crucial military
annexe was never mentioned. Miraculously, Nato - with 40,000 troops to
move into the province (10,000 more than originally envisaged) - no
longer needed appendix B. Not a single Nato soldier moved north of
Kosovo into the rest of Serbia. What was the real purpose of Nato's last
minute demand? Was it a Trojan horse? To save the peace? Or to sabotage
it? (END)
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
3. U.S. lied to justify war
>>From Nov.3, Toronto Star (a similar article appeared in the Nov. 11 New
York Times)
"No genocide, no justification for war on Kosovo"
IN THE GENOCIDE of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by the forces of Serb
leader Slobodan Milosevic, the worst incident occurred at the Trepca
mine. As reported by American and NATO officials, large numbers of
bodies were brought in by trucks under the cover of darkness. The bodies
were then thrown down the shafts, or were disposed of entirely in the
mine's vats of hydrochloric acid. Estimates of the number of dead began
at 1,000. That was six months ago, in the middle of the war undertaken
to halt what both U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair called "a human catastrophe." Estimates of the number of
ethnic Albanians slaughtered went upward from 10,000. U.S. Defence
Secretary William Cohen put the count at 100,000. Three weeks ago, the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia released the
findings of Western forensic teams investigating the horror at Trepca.
There were not 1,000 bodies down the mine shafts at Trepca, reported the
tribunal. There were not 100 bodies there. There was not one body there,
nor was there any evidence the vats had ever been used to dispose of
human remains. Shortly afterward, the tribunal reported on its work at
the most infamous of all the mass graves of ethnic Albanians, at
Ljubenic near the town of Pec. Earlier, NATO officials had said 350
victims had been hastily buried there by the retreating Serb forces.
There were not 350 bodies at Ljubenic, though. There were five. So far,
not one mass grave has been found in Kosovo, despite four months' work
by forensic teams, including experts from the FBI and the RCMP. This
discovery - more accurately, this non-discovery - first was made public
three weeks ago by the Texas-based intelligence think tank, Stratfor.
Stratfor estimated the number of ethnic Albanian dead in Kosovo at 500.
Last weekend, the story was broadcast for the first time by the TV
Ontario program Diplomatic Immunity. (Last Sunday's New York Times was
still using the "10,000 deaths" figure.) The story has begun to appear
in European newspapers. Spain's El Pais has quoted the head of the
Spanish forensic team, Emilo Pujol, as saying he had resigned because,
after being told to expect to have to carry out 2,000 autopsies, he'd
only had 97 bodies to examine - none of which "showed any signs of
mutilation or torture." Because 250 of 400 suspected mass graves in
Kosovo remain to be examined, it's possible that evidence of mass
killings will yet be found. This is highly unlikely though, because the
worst sites were dug up first. No genocide of ethnic Albanians by Serbs,
therefore. No "human catastrophe." No "modern-day Holocaust." All of
those claims may have been an honest mistake. Equally, they may have
been a grotesque lie concocted to justify a war that NATO originally
assumed would be over in a day or two, with Milosevic using the excuse
of some minimal damage as a cover for a surrender, but then had to fight
(at great expense) for months. There's no question that atrocities were
committed in Kosovo, overwhelmingly by the Serb forces, although the
ethnic Albanian guerrillas were not innocent. Quite obviously, these
forces, acting on Milosevic's explicit orders, carried out mass
expulsions of people, terrorizing them and destroying their homes and
property. Acts like these are inexcusable. That they occur often in
civil wars (far worse are being committed by the Russians in Chechnya),
is irrelevant to their horror. But they have nothing to do with
genocide. No genocide means no justification for a war inflicted by NATO
on a sovereign nation. Only a certainty of imminent genocide could have
legally justified a war that was not even discussed by the U.N. Security
Council. No genocide means that the tribunal's indictment of Milosevic
becomes highly questionable. Even more questionable is the West's
continued punishment of the Serbs - the Danube bridges and the power
stations remain in ruins - when their offence may well have been
stupidity rather than criminality. The absence of genocide may mean
something else, something deeply shaming. To halt the supposed genocide,
NATO bombed targets in Serbia proper. Because of "collateral" or
accidental damage, such as the bombing of a train, some 500 civilians
were killed (Belgrade claims almost 1,000 deaths). NATO very likely
killed as many people as were killed in Kosovo. The number of these dead
isn't large enough to justify NATO's actions being called a "human
catastrophe." But, unless proof of genocide can be produced, NATO's
actions were clearly a moral catastrophe.
Richard Gwyn's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday in The Star
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
Here's a comment on the War crimes Tribunal in the Hague: From the
London Times, June 18, 1999
"This is not victors' justice in the former Yugoslavia in fact, it is no
justice at all."
By John Laughland
Emotion may be a spur to justice, but it is rarely its guarantor. The
allegations of war crimes eagerly funnelled out of Kosovo by the
thousands of journalists in the province have provoked a demand for
retribution. That cry for justice is natural. But the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the body charged with
pursuing those accused of war crimes in Kosovo, is a rogue court with
rigged rules....
The International Criminal Tribunal shows little sign of caring that
NATO has itself broken nearly every rule of war, or that the peace deal
concluded with Belgrade is null and void in international law, since
Yugoslavia's signature was obtained by force. Instead, it displays
considerable contempt for the very thing which distinguishes the rule of
law from retributive justice, namely due process....
Although it is a key requirement for due process that a defendant be
tried by a body "established by law", the Security Council is not a
law-making body. Faced with the allegation that it had no legitimacy,
the tribunal did not refer the matter to another body, such as the
International Court of Justice, but instead decided to deal with the
charge itself. Not surprisingly, it found in its own favour....
The tribunal gives itself powers as it goes along. Louise Arbour, the
recently departed Chief Prosecutor, has said: "The law, to me, should be
creative and used to make things tight," and the tribunal dips into a
potpourri of different legal systems from around the world. In one case,
the tribunal defended itself against charges that it had illegally
seized documents from the Bosnian Government by saying that its
procedures were compatible with the law in Paraguay. General Stroessner
evidently has a place in the tribunal's judicial pantheon alongside Sir
Edward Coke and William Blackstone.
As if this were not enough, the tribunal is not funded by disinterested
parties, but by those who waged or supported the attacks on Yugoslavia.
These include the leading NATO governments (especially the United
States) and various non- governmental organisations like George Soros's
Open Society Institute, whose head of office in Kosovo is a militant
supporter of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Might, it seems, is always right. Just ask the NATO spokesman Jamie
Shea. On May 17, he was asked whether NATO leaders could ever be
indicted by the tribunal. "As you know," he replied, "without NATO
countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would
there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have
established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who
support on a daily basis their activities."
This is not victors' justice it is no justice at all.
posted: 1/12/00
war crimes
inquiry press releases
===
Vorbereitungskomitee
Wiener Tribunal
Wir erheben politische Anklage gegen
Bundeskanzler Mag. Viktor Klima
Vizekanzler und Außenminister Dr. Wolfgang Schüssel
Verteidigungsminister Dr. Werner Fasslabend
Ehem. EU-Sonderbeauftragten Dr. Wolfgang Petritsch, dzt. Hoher
Repräsentant
für Bosnien
Außenminister a.D. Dr. Alois Mock
Wegen Unterstützung und Befürwortung des Angriffskriegs der NATO gegen
die
Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien. Wegen offener Parteinahme in einem
Bürgerkrieg,
politisch, wirtschaftlich und logistisch, als auch mit Söldnern.
Wegen des Verdachts der Verletzung der völkerrechtlich verankerten
immerwährenden Neutralität Österreichs, indem Verpflichtungen über das
Verhalten eines immerwährend neutralen Staates, sich in jedem Falle,
auch in
Friedenszeiten, so zu verhalten, daß keine Begünstigung einer
Konfliktseite
herausgelesen werden kann, nicht eingehalten wurden.
Wegen des Verdachts von stattgefundenen Überflügen durch Flugzeuge der
NATO-Luftwaffen zur Zeit des Krieges gegen Jugoslawien, die, obwohl in
diesem Fall von Österreich nicht genehmigt, nach Aufschlüssen der
österr.
Luftverkehrskontrolle massiv zugenommen haben, wobei nicht bekannt ist,
wie
viele davon evtl. bewaffnet zur Unterstützung des Luftkrieges der NATO
stattgefunden haben und welche Protestmaßnahmen von Seiten
österreichischer
Organe ergriffen wurden. Ebenso wegen schon lange vorher wiederholt
getätigter Durchfahrten von NATO-Fahrzeugen nach Stützpunkten in Ungarn,
von
denen angenommen werden kann, daß nicht nur "humanitäre" Transporte
vorlagen.
Wegen des Verdachts der Weitergabe von Erkenntnissen, welchen
Wahrheitsgehaltes auch immer, geheimdienstlicher Art über Aktivitäten
auf
dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien durch österreichische Stellen
an
v.a. westliche bzw. NATO-Dienste, wodurch Verletzungen der
Neutralitätsverpflichtungen Österreichs angenommen werden können.
Wegen des Verdachts der Begünstigung bzw. Unterstützung des Bruchs des
Verbotes der Führung eines "ökologischen Krieges" durch die NATO (d.i.
Bombardierung von Erdölraffinerien, chemischen Fabriken und anderen, bei
Beschädigung oder Zerstörung negative Umweltfolgen zeitigenden
Einrichtungen, lokal wie auch regional), sowie des Einsatzes verbotener
Waffen (Cluster-bombs, d.i. Streubomben, und Munition ummantelt mit
abgereichertem Uran, Depleted Uranium, DU).
Wegen des Verdachts der Begünstigung einer Aggressionshandlung der
Nordatlantischen Vertragsorganisation, die, sich selbst mandatierend,
ohne
einen Beschluß oder die Beauftragung durch den UN-Sicherheitsrat und
entgegen allen anderen eingegangenen völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen
zum
Gewaltverzicht in den internationalen Beziehungen und den Beziehungen
der
Staaten untereinander, einen Angriffskrieg gegen das Territorium eines
souveränen Staates geführt hat und darüberhinaus auch ihre eigene
Vertragsgrundlage verletzte.
Wegen des Verdachts der Zustimmung zu einer daraus folgenden "neuen
Weltordnung", in der ein dauernd beschworenes Recht auf "humanitäre
Interventionen" von der Nordatlantischen Vertragsorganisation (NATO) mit
Waffengewalt und dem Rückhalt der größten militärischen Mächte global
durchgesetzt werden soll.
Wegen des Verdachts des Hintanhaltens von Durchsetzung
nicht-militärischer
und gewaltfreier Konfliktlösungsmöglichkeiten, wie in der Verhinderung
von
Aufgaben der OSZE auch durch das neutrale Österreich, etwa durch einen
nicht
nachvollziehbaren Abzugsbefehl, durch die Auslieferung des Mandats an
einen
Beauftragten wie den US-Diplomaten William Walker, durch den nicht
vorhandenen Widerstand der Bundesregierung gegen den - mißbräuchlichen -
Einsatz der OSZE bei der strategischen Vorbereitung des Krieges gegen
Jugoslawien sowie durch die nicht vorhandenen Bemühungen der
Bundesregierung
den Status der Suspendierung der Bundesrepublik Jugoslwawien in der
Organisation aufzuheben, um Bemühungen für Verhandlungslösungen zu
begünstigen.
Wegen des Verdachts des Inkaufnehmens des vorhersehbaren Scheiterns der
sog.
Friedensverhandlungen von Paris und Rambouillet, die auf den
erpresserischen
und auf ein Besetzungsdiktat hinauslaufenden, erst später der
Öffentlichkeit
bekannt gewordenen, angefügten Annex B, einem als Ultimatum zu
bewertenden
Zusatz, der schlußendlich zur conditio sine qua non erklärt wurde,
eskaliert
wurden, wobei nach völkerrechtlichen Maßstäben ein Vertrag, der unter
dem
Zwang eines faktischen Ultimatums zustande käme, per se ungültig wäre.
Wegen des Verdachts der wiederholten Inkaufnahme wenn nicht Begünstigung
der
Zerschlagung der damaligen souveränen SFR Jugoslawien durch
Unterstützung,
Zustimmung und Vorwegnahme einer, v.a. durch bzw. in Verbindung mit der
Bundesrepublik Deutschland vorangetriebenen, Anerkennungspolitik der
Sezession von Teilrepubliken der damaligen SFR Jugoslawien.
Wegen des Verdachts zumindest der Duldung von verhetzender
Berichterstattung
v.a. gegenüber dem serbischen Bevölkerungsteil der Bundesrepublik
Jugoslawien, insbesondere in Medien öffentlichen Rechts. Sowohl wegen
des
Verdachts der Berichterstattung gegenüber Serbien wie auch der
Aufhetzung
von Volksgruppen gegeneinander auf dem Territorium der Bundesrepublik
Jugoslawien und nicht erfolgten Eingriffen bzw. Richtigstellungen der
österr. Bundesregierung, wobei dadurch das Verhalten eines immerwährend
neutralen Staates ebenfalls in Frage gestellt wurde.
Aufgrund dieser Verdachtsmomente verlangen die VertreterInnen des
Vorbereitungskomitees des Wiener Tribunals eine Anklage der österr.
Bundesregierung bzw. der ob. angef. namentlich genannten Personen durch
das
Wiener Tribunal am 4. Dezember 1999 wegen Begünstigung und Unterstützung
des
NATO-Angriffskrieges gegen die BR Jugoslawien.
Eine etwaige Verurteilung soll dem Internationalen Tribunal, vertreten
durch
Mr. Ramsey Clark, für die Generalanklage vor dem Internationalen
Gerichtshof
in Den Haag zur Verfügung gestellt werden.
===
STOP NATO: !NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.HOME-PAGE.ORG
>IEA War Crimes Indictment Had Claimed Conflict of Interest
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
>By REVEREND CANON KENNETH GUNN-WALBERG
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>--
[Excerpted from an address before the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan
Studies and the Centre for Peace in the Balkans (Toronto) 10/31/99]
I am speaking today in my capacity as President of the International
Ethical
Alliance (IEA) -- which denounces NATO's bombings of Yugoslavia. IEA is
a
United States non-profit organization committed to enhancing ethics in
government
On July 8, 1999 IEA filed a formal indictment with the International
Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia charging President Clinton and others
with
War Crimes against the people of Serbia. The indictment was drafted by
the
Chairman of our Board of Directors, Jerome M. Zeifman.
"Jerry" (of whom I am a quasi-father confessor) is a life-long Democrat.
(I
am not.) At the time of the Nixon impeachment inquiry he served as Chief
Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee. As was first reported by
Insight
Magazine, and then by Matt Drudge on Fox TV, the indictment IEA filed
with
the ICTY has five prongs.
First, it charges defendants Clinton, Cohen, and other leaders of NATO
countries with "non-defensive aggressive military attacks on Yugoslavia,
which have not been necessary to defend the national security of the
United
States ... and are proscribed inter alia in the Charter of the
International
Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, Aug. 8, 1945, and the 1947 Charter of the
United Nations.
Second, it relies on specified evidence and expert testimony from
witnesses
whom IEA wants the Tribunal to summon, "including but not limited to:
former
U.S. President Jimmy Carter; former Nuremberg prosecutor for the United
States, Walter Rockler; Bishop Artemious of Kosovo; journalist Alexander
Cockburn; and playwright Harold Pinter."
Third, it charges, "There is substantial evidence of conduct by [then]
prosecutor Louise Arbour that warrants her disqualification, including
but
not limited to: (i) the engaging in selective prosecution by
intentionally
failing to consider and act on evidence which incriminates defendants
Clinton
and Cohen, and other as yet unindicted officials of NATO countries; (ii)
conflicts of interest, or the appearance thereof, in receiving
compensation
from funds contributed to the Tribunal in whole or in part by
governments of
NATO; and (iii) bias in favor of the attacks by NATO on former
Yugoslavia."
Fourth, it calls for, "The appointment of an independent prosecutor who:
(i)
is not a citizen or permanent resident of a NATO country; (ii) is
compensated
only from funds specifically contributed by non-NATO countries; and
(iii) has
an independent staff that is not compensated directly or indirectly from
funds contributed by NATO countries.
Fifth, of the Tribunal's fourteen justices, it calls for the
disqualification
for conflicts of interest of five justices representing NATO countries,
including chief justice Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States
I am pleased today to inform you that (as was also first reported by
Insight
Magazine) IEA's indictment has already had a modicum of success. Of the
five
Tribunal members for whose disqualification IEA had petitioned, by now
three
have resigned before the expiration of their terms.
On September 6, 1999, Justice Antonio Cassese of Italy (whose term was
not up
until 17 November 2001) announced his retirement and plans to resume an
academic career at Florence University.
On September 15, Louise Arbour resigned. She has been appointed to the
Canadian Supreme Court. Many Canadian critics of Prime Minister Chretien
have
opposed her appointment -- and consider it as a reward for suppressing
evidence of Chretien's and Clinton's war crimes in the bombing of
Yugoslavia
As Arbour's replacement, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed
Carla
Del Ponte, a former Attorney General of Switzerland. Based on her prior
record for professional integrity and traditional Swiss neutrality in
military affairs she appears to Mr. Zeifman to be qualified.
As of November 17 the Tribunal's Chief Justice McDonald will be also
vacating
her unexpired term. As her replacement, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
has
appointed Patricia Wald, currently a Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals for the District of Columbia. Jerry Zeifman is particularly
pleased
by Kofi Annan's appointment of Justice Wald -- of whose prior career he
has
some personal knowledge. She had served as Assistant Attorney General
during the Carter administration. Carter eventually appointed her to a
federal Judgeship.
[Canon Gunn-Walberg is a Canadian and an Anglican Catholic Priest now
residing in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania
Membership in IEA is free and includes a subscription to an email
news letter. Persons who wish to receive more information may phone or
fax
Canon Gunn-Walberg at 814 342 0224 or send email to jzeifman@....
--------- COORDINAMENTO ROMANO PER LA JUGOSLAVIA -----------
RIMSKI SAVEZ ZA JUGOSLAVIJU
e-mail: crj@... - URL: http://marx2001.org/crj
** NO COPYRIGHT ! **
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