Da: ICDSM Italia
Data: Mar 17 Ago 2004 19:04:41 Europe/Rome
A: i c d s m - i t a l i a @yahoogroups.com
Oggetto: [icdsm-italia] John Laughland and John Steppling
John Laughland and John Steppling
[ Due salaci, interessantissimi articoli sulla violazione del diritto
all'autodifesa di Slobodan Milosevic. Nei quali si sottolinea
soprattutto l'imbarazzato silenzio dei media e di tanti autoproclamati
"difensori dei diritti umani", "paladini del diritto" e militanti della
sinistra internazionalista, i quali sembrano aver perso la parola in
merito a quanto sta accadendo - da ormai quattro anni! - nella galera
di Sheveningen. Ma come: il "processo a Milosevic" non doveva essere
l'occasione per accertare circostanze e responsabilita' sui terribili
crimini commessi in Jugoslavia dal 1991 in poi? E allora, perche'
nessuno lo segue, quel processo?... ]
1. Let Slobo speak for himself (by John Laughland)
2. The Debacle At The Hague (by John Steppling)
---( 1 )---
http://www.spectator.co.uk/
article.php?table=old§ion=current&issue=2004-07-10&id=4796
Let Slobo speak for himself
The Spectator (UK) - July 10, 2004
John Laughland says that the case against Milosevic has all but
collapsed for lack of evidence
For a few hours on Monday, the world’s human rights establishment was
seized by terror. Slobodan Milosevic had been due to begin his defence
at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
in The Hague, but instead discussion focused on the former president’s
fragile health, which has been made worse by the rigours of the trial.
When the presiding judge, Patrick Robinson, said that a ‘radical
review’ of the proceedings would now be necessary, many do-gooders
feared that their worst nightmare was about to be realised — that the
international community’s main trophy in its crusade for morality
might, if only on medical grounds, be allowed to walk free.
Few human rights activists had ever contemplated such an outcome, still
less an acquittal. The presumption of innocence has never counted for
much in the highly politicised world of international humanitarian law.
One war crimes expert, James Gow, said on Channel 4 on Monday that it
would be better if Milosevic died in the dock, because if the trial ran
its course he might be sentenced for only relatively minor charges.
That ought to be awfully embarrassing for those like Gow who have
assured us that he is as guilty as hell. Fortunately for them, the ICTY
is not really in the business of acquittal. As one academic specialist
on the ICTY, Professor Michael Scharf, has noted approvingly, the
ICTY’s rules were designed ‘to minimise the possibility of a charge
being dismissed for lack of evidence’, a sentiment of which the Queen
of Hearts would have been proud.
As it stands, the judges seem poised to impose a defence counsel on
Milosevic. Far from helping him, of course, the intention here is to
weaken his defence by requiring him to be represented by a lawyer who
knows the issues far less well than he does. Such a move would fly in
the face of the judges’ earlier rulings against this idea — and the new
presiding judge himself was, in the past, especially firm that this
would be contrary to the defendant’s rights. It would at least provide
comfort to the beleaguered prosecution. When he is not trying to get
the court to force Milosevic to give up smoking — a certain death
sentence for any Serb — Geoffrey Nice QC, the lead prosecutor, has
repeatedly sought to accomplish this switch, not least because the
two-year prosecution case has been a nearly unmitigated disaster.
Since the trial started in February 2002, the prosecution has wheeled
out more than 100 witnesses, and it has produced 600,000 pages of
evidence. Not a single person has testified that Milosevic ordered war
crimes. Whole swaths of the indictment on Kosovo have been left
unsubstantiated, even though Milosevic’s command responsibility here is
clearest. And when the prosecution did try to substantiate its charges,
the result was often farce. Highlights include the Serbian ‘insider’
who claimed to have worked in the presidential administration but who
did not know what floor Milosevic’s office was on; ‘Arkan’s secretary’,
who turned out to have worked only as a temp for a few months in the
same building as the notorious paramilitary; the testimony of the
former federal prime minister, Ante Markovic, dramatically rumbled by
Milosevic, who produced Markovic’s own diary for the days when he
claimed to have had meetings with him; the Kosovo Albanian peasant who
said he had never heard of the KLA even though there is a monument to
that terrorist organisation in his own village; and the former head of
the Yugoslav secret services, Radomir Markovic, who not only claimed
that he had been tortured by the new democratic government in Belgrade
to testify against his former boss, but who also agreed, under
cross-examination by Milosevic, that no orders had been given to expel
the Kosovo Albanians and that, on the contrary, Milosevic had
instructed the police and army to protect civilians. And these, note,
were the prosecution witnesses.
Serious doubt has also been cast on some of the most famous atrocity
stories. Remember the refrigerator truck whose discovery in the Danube
in 1999, full of bodies, was gleefully reported as Milosevic was
transferred to The Hague in June 2001? The truck had allegedly been
retrieved from the river and then driven to the outskirts of Belgrade,
where its contents were interred in a mass grave. But cross-examination
showed that there is no proof that the bodies exhumed were the ones in
the truck, nor that any of them came from Kosovo. Instead, it is quite
possible that the Batajnica mass grave dated from the second world war,
while the refrigerator truck may have contained Kurds being smuggled to
Western Europe, the victims of a grisly traffic accident. The
realisation is now dawning that lies were peddled to justify the Kosovo
war just as earnestly as they were to justify the attack on Iraq.
The weakness of the prosecution case was underlined by the fact that
its triumphant conclusion in February was to broadcast a TV documentary
made several years ago. This suggests that its two-year marathon has
not served to advance knowledge of the truth beyond the tall stories
peddled by telly hacks at the time. Even professional supporters of the
ICTY now admit that the only ‘proof’ of Milosevic’s guilt has been
General Sir Rupert Smith’s stated ‘impression’ that Milosevic
controlled the Bosnian Serbs, and Paddy Ashdown’s statement that he
‘warned’ the former Yugoslav head of state that war crimes were being
committed in Kosovo. In February, the chief prosecutor herself, Carla
del Ponte, admitted that she did not have enough evidence to convict
Milosevic on the most serious charges.
The supposedly impartial judges have been deeply complicit in this
prosecution bungling. The ICTY has long been characterised by an
unhealthy community of interests between the judges and the
prosecutors; I have myself heard the first president of the ICTY, Judge
Antonio Cassese, boast that he encouraged the prosecutor to issue
indictments against the Bosnian Serb leaders, a statement which should
disqualify him from serving as a judge ever again. In the Milosevic
trial, the judges have admitted a tawdry parade of ‘expert witnesses’
who are not, in fact, witnesses to anything. In Britain, the role of
experts is rightly under the spotlight after the convictions of some
250 parents found guilty of killing their babies have been thrown into
doubt precisely because they relied on this kind of testimony; but in
the ICTY you can be a ‘witness’ without ever having set foot in
Yugoslavia.
Numerous other judicial abuses have been legitimised by the ICTY. The
use of hearsay evidence is now so out of control that people are often
allowed to testify that they heard someone say something about someone
else. It is common for the ICTY to offer reduced sentences (five years
in one case) to men convicted of hideous crimes, mass murder for
instance, if they agree to testify against Milosevic. The use of
anonymous witnesses is now very widespread, as is the frequency of the
‘closed sessions’: a glance at the ICTY transcripts shows pages and
pages blanked out because sensitive issues have been discussed in court
— sensitive, that is, to the security interests of the Great Powers
which control it, the USA in first place. The ICTY’s nadir came last
December, when the former supreme commander of Nato, Wesley Clark,
testified in the Milosevic trial; the court agreed to let the Pentagon
censor its proceedings, and the transcripts were not released until
Washington had given the green light. So much for the ICTY’s
transparency and independence.
Ironically, Slobbo has one objective ally: the British prime minister.
The possibility is now real that a conviction of Milosevic can be
secured only on the widest possible interpretation of the doctrine of
command responsibility: for instance, that he knew about atrocities
committed by the Bosnian Serbs and did nothing to stop them. But if
Milosevic can be convicted for complicity in crimes committed by people
in a foreign country, over whom he had no formal control, how much
greater is the complicity of the British government in crimes committed
by the US in Iraq, a country with which the UK is in an official
coalition? This is not just a cheap political jibe but a serious
judicial conundrum: the UK is a signatory to the new International
Criminal Court, and so Tony Blair is subject to the jurisdiction of the
new Hague-based body whose jurisprudence will be modelled on that of
the ICTY. So if Slobbo goes down for ten years in Scheveningen jail
because of abuses committed by his policemen, then by rights his
cell-mate should, in time, be Tony.
John Laughland’s latest book is Le Tribunal pénal international:
gardien du nouvel ordre mondial, published by François-Xavier de
Guibert, Paris, 2003.
© 2004 The Spectator
Posted for Fair Use only.
---( 2 )---
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/johns03.html
SWANS, Monday, August 16, 2004
The Debacle At The Hague
by John Steppling
(Swans - August 16, 2004) It's interesting to note how most reasonable
people I know accept the duplicity of corporate mainstream media. The
run up to the invasion of Iraq was rightly seen as crass propaganda by
most right thinking humans. However, these same people have a much
harder time questioning the assumptions behind, and the statistics
about, what is happening in the Sudan now, or Rwanda, and especially
what took place in the former Yugoslavia.
Why is this? Well, looking at Yugoslavia, perhaps it's the liberal
tendency to believe Democrats wouldn't really fabricate a crisis, or
create one, or distort all the information about one. They tend to
think a Democrat wouldn't drop tons of Depleted Uranium (DU) tipped
ordnance on a country unless there was a darn good reason for it -- a
reason of humanitarian resonance. The bombing of Belgrade, under Bill
Clinton, and carried out by Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, is
still widely seen as the way, the only way, to stop the genocide
orchestrated by crazed Serbian killers. Now, I suppose it's time to
look more closely at this word "genocide." The propaganda mill that
Washington drives non-stop has created over the last twenty-some years
a sort of index of buzzwords that it trots out, with appropriate visual
reinforcement, to convince the liberal left (it doesn't have to
convince the right) that sending in the Marines is actually a noble and
compassionate act. Genocide is at the top of this buzzword list. It's a
word that was rarely used after WWII out of a sense for the specialness
of the Holocaust. It has, of late, however been used for almost all
international crises, raising bizarre issues of body counts vs.
varieties of atrocity; the new Olympics of comparative ethical mayhem.
When one needs to focus attention on a particular issue, those running
the show just cry genocide. It is now a shorthand for armchair debate
about intervention (by the colonial West) and about when it should
start; now, or a bit later. In any case, sending in the Marines has
never been, nor will it ever be, a compassionate act. Armies are
created, as are states for that matter, to protect the ruling class and
their interests. The question is always framed with a "how can we stand
by while this happens." sort of formatting (cue visual aids, scene of
refugee camp, hungry children, interview with caring NGO workers). Such
framing creates the atmosphere in which guilt will grow most quickly,
and modern guilt is intimately linked to self-loathing, doubt, and
feelings of alienation. To alleviate this alienation the narcotized
public must be given symbolic acts of compassion and caring... and such
symbolism can be found (in a kind of weird Freudian/Biblical vortex) by
spilling more blood... by symbolic sacrifice in the cloak of
humanitarian intervention. The transgression is erased through the
proof found in the symbolic slaughter. Exploring the underlying causes
of such crises is simply too much work for most citizens. Such is the
modern dysfunctional Empire.
My intention is not to go over the entire history of this complex
region, but to focus on the propaganda surrounding the trial of
Slobodan Milosevic, and especially the current state of his defense and
the collapse of the prosecution's case. I find a great many people who
otherwise might question an illegal institution like the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), willing to accept
this one's dodgy foundations and lack of international credibility
because they have been so convinced of the "evil" of Milosevic. Just a
quick rewind here: Milosevic was kidnapped (illegally, as most kidnaps
are) by Zoran Djindic, former President of Serbia, in exchange for a
promise of one billion in aid (which never came, because the U.S.
decided there was the matter of a debt incurred by Tito that needed to
be made right). Imagine Ariel Sharon being kidnapped -- a genuine
criminal, blood soaked and pathological -- or Henry Kissinger, or John
Negroponte, and carried off to The Hague and tossed in a cell. Imagine
the response of the media. Yet hardly a word of complaint was heard in
the West when Milosevic was snatched. Why? The obvious answer has to do
with the business interests and agenda of the U.S. (and its desire to
further co-opt NATO) to break up the Yugoslav Republic. Since these
same interests control the media, one isn't likely to hear much of a
critique from ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN or FOX, or even The New York Times.
America is a force for good, after all. We only kidnap those who
deserve kidnapping, and Milosevic, by the time he was taken, had been
sufficiently demonized that there seemed little to do except take him
to prison and throw away the key.
The prosecution has spent two years (and called 295 witnesses!) on this
case, and for anyone who has bothered to look hard enough, this
prosecution has utterly failed to prove a single of its accusations.
Neil Clark (in The Guardian), back in February, pointed out that
nothing has been proven and then added, "the nature and extent of the
atrocities themselves have been called into question." I remember CNN
full of the odious Christiane Amanpour (not coincidently the wife of
Albright's errand boy Jamie Rubin, who also not coincidently was Wesley
Clark's assistant during Clark's closed door testimony -- a hearing
that even Milosevic's legal associates were not permitted to attend)
blathering on about how important a trial this was, how international
justice was on the threshold of a great breakthrough, yada yada yada.
Funny, I don't see Christiane, or anyone, talking about this
"important" case anymore. From daily updates to nothing. Why? Again,
the answer lies in the total breakdown of the US/NATO scenario.
Milosevic defended himself, while refusing to acknowledge the
legitimacy of the court. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. The
delusional Carla Del Ponte was possibly, in retrospect for the Empire,
a bad choice to head the prosecution. A dwarfish, churlish, and
unpleasant Swiss woman of seemingly limited intelligence, Del Ponte has
carried on with little prosecutorial skill and even less self-control
when facing a journalist's microphone. Beyond that, the endless list of
witnesses has been revealed (often by deft questioning from Milosevic)
as liars, frauds, and accomplices of US interests. The transcript runs
to 50,000 pages (all materials run to 500,000 pages, and additionally
some 5,000 video cassettes). Milosevic has had to read it all himself
and has been denied visits from family and friends. Even with this head
start the prosecution couldn't mount a coherent case for any of its
charges. Even those who cling to the arguments of journalists like
Timothy Garton Ash, Misha Glenny, or Marlise Simons will be forced to
face the fact that this trial has been a fiasco from its inception.
This, however, brings us to the current situation; now that the
prosecution has rested and that it's Milosevic's turn to defend
himself, the Court is worried (yeah, right) that his health may not
allow him to continue to act as his own counsel. The intention of the
Tribunal is to impose a counsel, to force Milosevic to stop defending
himself. This desperate eleventh-hour measure is a naked reminder, if
any were really needed, of just how far off track this entire
proceeding has gone. The absurdity of using an untreated medical
condition as an excuse to abridge basic rights and silence a defendant
is, possibly, a new low point in modern international law.
Fifty international lawyers have signed a petition sent to the UN
Security General, the Security Council, and the General Assembly
(signed by, among others, Ramsey Clark, USA; Jacques Verges, France;
Sergei Baburin, VP of the Russian Duma; Jitendra Sharma, India; and
drafted by Tiphaine Dickson, Canada). The main thrust is that an
imposition of counsel constitutes a violation of all recognized
judicial rights (and will further aggravate Milosevic's health, rather
than alleviate his medical condition). The International Covenant of
Civil and Political Rights, US Supreme Court decisions, and the Rivonia
Trials (where Mandela defended himself!) are cited as precedent. The
right to defend oneself is central to all international law and the
very structure of adversarial justice. In fact, the only precedent for
imposition of counsel can be found in the Star Chamber, which since the
17th century has stood as symbolic of egregious disregard for basic
defendant's rights. The ICTY now resembles nothing so much as Judge Roy
Bean or the inner chambers of Torqemada, such is the devolution of due
process in our era of Empire. The entire process has been tilted to
favor the prosecution -- Milosevic gets only 150 days to prepare his
defense (the prosecution has had at least since 1999 to prepare
material, and from another perspective has had almost ten years) and
has had no access to the media, something which the prosecution has
been playing to endlessly, voicing their perspective and commentary...
including the creepy appearance of Wesley Clark following his censored
testimony. Notwithstanding the obvious bias, the average citizen of the
West (and certainly of the U.S.) would get the impression (as a
Harper's valentine article to The Hague indicated) that the ICTY has
bent over backwards to accommodate Mr. Milosevic. Such distortion is
typical of the new corporate spin that is lapped up by liberals and
conservatives alike. In The London Times of July 31, 2004, in a review
of Chris Stephen's book "Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan
Milosevic," Janine Di Giovanni points out that "if Judgement Day were
read with no prior knowledge, it would be possible to believe Milosevic
had already been tried and convicted." Stephen's book is the usual
gloss on this subject. It's telling to note that that other Chalabi,
who now runs the Saddam trial, has put an end (after one preliminary
hearing) to any journalists or media inside the courtroom, fearing no
doubt, exactly what has taken place at the ICTY. Clearly, they have
learned their lesson; simply don't allow any kind of due process and
keep it all secret.
Tiphaine Dickson, an international lawyer practicing before the UN
tribunals since 1997, spoke to me about the steady and Orwellian
deterioration of internationally recognized basic rights by the very
bodies whose stated purpose is to enforce respect for human rights.
"The precedents set by the Rwanda and Yugoslav courts are shocking for
defense lawyers who arrive to defend a client at The Hague or Arusha.
Indictments with little or no evidence, disregard for extradition
procedures, piecemeal disclosure, third hand hearsay, drastically
limited cross examination, and modification of rules by judges in
collaboration with the prosecution as trials go along, not to mention
US pressure to speed up the process; all of it is just par for the
course in these Security Council Institutions. I was once asked by a
journalist why I became a political lawyer. My answer was because these
courts insisted on carrying out political trials."
I can't really speak for exactly why otherwise open-minded people feel
so intractable about this subject. Perhaps it's just the Clinton aspect
to the bombing, or more likely, it's just the infantile response one
has in the face of all authority, and the attendant submission to the
illusion of protection that all authority figures provide. Seeking
consensus is part of this childhood fear, the need for the father
figure to be given respect and from which, in return, one will receive
rational security. The sense of hopelessness most people feel today
makes such submission, such yearning for agreement, seem like (and feel
like) the only choice left. This is how propaganda works. One sees it
in the hysteria for Kerry, even though people know protest was silenced
and protesters were stuck in cages outside Fleet Center, and one sees
it in the refusal to look more deeply at the show trials of figures
like Milosevic, who has become a poster boy (along with Saddam, Castro
and all of FARC) for evil and despotism and, of course, terror (never
mind Islam Karamov of Uzbekistan, for instance, is a boon ally, nor
Colombian President Uribe, our partner in the war on drugs, is and was
a known narco-trafficker). The notion of spreading "our" values lies
behind not just Iraq, but behind the destruction of Yugoslavia as well.
An examination of who profits from these exercises in neo-liberal
do-gooding is rarely taken (Camp Bondsteel was built by Kellogg, Brown
and Root... as a quick example). The American force for good has to go
in and save people by killing more of them. Few question the
assumptions behind buzzwords like Srebrenica or ethnic cleansing (get
Sharon on the phone again, OK?) or mass rape or death squads. Evidence
seems unnecessary and increasingly due process seems simply an
irritant, to be done away with, if at all possible. Presumption of
guilt seems no obstacle to a "fair" trial. From Guantánamo Bay or Abu
Ghraib to The Hague is not such a leap. From the Star Chamber or the
Texas Death House, to the irrationality of Carla Del Ponte, Jeffrey
Nice, or the late Richard May (who died of brain cancer mid-trial) is
also but a small step. Crises occur and few ask for what or who created
them. Just send in the UN, or the Marines, and kick some ass, dump some
munitions, and then call in the World Bank and the IMF. A favorite
argument of the liberal left starts with the opening giveaway that
history not be exhumed, and that one should only ask "what is to be
done now?" As if that is the new reality principle, the new
realpolitik. History is increasingly to be ignored or taken on faith
from State Department memos, and that the difficult and often nearly
impossible task of sifting through the remains of cultures and peoples
and villages is just too complicated and time consuming, and often
(most importantly) yields only partial results. Real history is not
made of the whole-cloth (invented) truisms so beloved by the new
liberal journalists that serve as hagiographers for our Imperial class.
It's as if to question the veracity of major magazines and newspapers;
to question the possible agenda of journalists (clinging to jobs where
the paycheck comes from a corporation with a vested interest in the
matter) is too large a leap -- it threatens too much of the bedrock
trust in societal institutions. Without that trust the sense of our
place and role would be threatened, and without that sense, people tend
to reach psychic fail-safe.
The script for the ICTY was to blame Serbian aggression for the wars in
the Balkans. The Serbs must then accept guilt and voilà, history will
be re-written to accommodate the US strategic and business interests.
The destruction of legality evident at the ICTY is important for other
reasons as well. If such kangaroo courts are given credibility and
accepted, then one can pretty well expect a similar erosion of due
process when the courts are prosecuting junkies and homeless people,
black teenagers and Latino gang members. They can all expect to have to
adhere to even more stringent standards of innocence, while Poindexter,
Negroponte or Elliot Abrams can continue to find work in high places
and sleep comfortable in the knowledge that their privileges are
guaranteed. The same folks who lied about WMD previously lied about
Yugoslavia. The National Endowment for Democracy and the co-opted US
media trotted out all manner of myth and fiction, most now roundly
discredited, and yet those myths stuck. Everything from disguising the
identity of the narco-gangsters of the KLA as plucky freedom fighting
underdogs (with help from Paul Wolfowitz and the Balkan Action Council,
and Bob Dole, for whom Albanian-Americans raised over a million dollars
to assist his election campaign -- Diana Johnstone is particularly good
on this subject), to the negative labeling of Milosevic as a
hyper-Nationalist (we all know Bush and Kerry are nothing of the sort)
and a fascist. All managed to find traction in the popular
consciousness on the Balkans. The fundamental illegality and outright
criminality of The Hague is obvious even if one insists on buying into
the rest of the US story on Milosevic. At the very least I would hope
the naked and blatant lack of fairness involved at the ICTY will be
acknowledged, for it is the starting point for a re-examination of this
entire shabby chunk of revisionist history. I hope that at the least,
the biases and contradictions of the jingoistic press will be
denounced; for to continue to accept the glaring lack of impartiality
of this Tribunal, and its coverage, is to accept another step in the
police state's death grip on our existence.
• • • • • •
John Steppling is a LA playwright (Rockefeller fellow, NEA recipient,
and PEN-West winner) and screenwriter (most recent was Animal Factory
directed by Steve Buscemi). He is currently living in Poland where he
teaches at the National Film School in Lodz.
Please, feel free to insert a link to this work on your Web site or to
disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph
or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or
repost this work on the Web without the expressed written authorization
of Swans. This material is copyrighted, © John Steppling 2004. All
rights reserved.
==========================
ICDSM - Sezione Italiana
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
tel/fax +39-06-4828957
email: icdsm-italia @ libero.it
Conto Corrente Postale numero 86557006
intestato ad Adolfo Amoroso, ROMA
causale: DIFESA MILOSEVIC
sito internet:
http://www.pasti.org/linkmilo.htm
Data: Mar 17 Ago 2004 19:04:41 Europe/Rome
A: i c d s m - i t a l i a @yahoogroups.com
Oggetto: [icdsm-italia] John Laughland and John Steppling
John Laughland and John Steppling
[ Due salaci, interessantissimi articoli sulla violazione del diritto
all'autodifesa di Slobodan Milosevic. Nei quali si sottolinea
soprattutto l'imbarazzato silenzio dei media e di tanti autoproclamati
"difensori dei diritti umani", "paladini del diritto" e militanti della
sinistra internazionalista, i quali sembrano aver perso la parola in
merito a quanto sta accadendo - da ormai quattro anni! - nella galera
di Sheveningen. Ma come: il "processo a Milosevic" non doveva essere
l'occasione per accertare circostanze e responsabilita' sui terribili
crimini commessi in Jugoslavia dal 1991 in poi? E allora, perche'
nessuno lo segue, quel processo?... ]
1. Let Slobo speak for himself (by John Laughland)
2. The Debacle At The Hague (by John Steppling)
---( 1 )---
http://www.spectator.co.uk/
article.php?table=old§ion=current&issue=2004-07-10&id=4796
Let Slobo speak for himself
The Spectator (UK) - July 10, 2004
John Laughland says that the case against Milosevic has all but
collapsed for lack of evidence
For a few hours on Monday, the world’s human rights establishment was
seized by terror. Slobodan Milosevic had been due to begin his defence
at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
in The Hague, but instead discussion focused on the former president’s
fragile health, which has been made worse by the rigours of the trial.
When the presiding judge, Patrick Robinson, said that a ‘radical
review’ of the proceedings would now be necessary, many do-gooders
feared that their worst nightmare was about to be realised — that the
international community’s main trophy in its crusade for morality
might, if only on medical grounds, be allowed to walk free.
Few human rights activists had ever contemplated such an outcome, still
less an acquittal. The presumption of innocence has never counted for
much in the highly politicised world of international humanitarian law.
One war crimes expert, James Gow, said on Channel 4 on Monday that it
would be better if Milosevic died in the dock, because if the trial ran
its course he might be sentenced for only relatively minor charges.
That ought to be awfully embarrassing for those like Gow who have
assured us that he is as guilty as hell. Fortunately for them, the ICTY
is not really in the business of acquittal. As one academic specialist
on the ICTY, Professor Michael Scharf, has noted approvingly, the
ICTY’s rules were designed ‘to minimise the possibility of a charge
being dismissed for lack of evidence’, a sentiment of which the Queen
of Hearts would have been proud.
As it stands, the judges seem poised to impose a defence counsel on
Milosevic. Far from helping him, of course, the intention here is to
weaken his defence by requiring him to be represented by a lawyer who
knows the issues far less well than he does. Such a move would fly in
the face of the judges’ earlier rulings against this idea — and the new
presiding judge himself was, in the past, especially firm that this
would be contrary to the defendant’s rights. It would at least provide
comfort to the beleaguered prosecution. When he is not trying to get
the court to force Milosevic to give up smoking — a certain death
sentence for any Serb — Geoffrey Nice QC, the lead prosecutor, has
repeatedly sought to accomplish this switch, not least because the
two-year prosecution case has been a nearly unmitigated disaster.
Since the trial started in February 2002, the prosecution has wheeled
out more than 100 witnesses, and it has produced 600,000 pages of
evidence. Not a single person has testified that Milosevic ordered war
crimes. Whole swaths of the indictment on Kosovo have been left
unsubstantiated, even though Milosevic’s command responsibility here is
clearest. And when the prosecution did try to substantiate its charges,
the result was often farce. Highlights include the Serbian ‘insider’
who claimed to have worked in the presidential administration but who
did not know what floor Milosevic’s office was on; ‘Arkan’s secretary’,
who turned out to have worked only as a temp for a few months in the
same building as the notorious paramilitary; the testimony of the
former federal prime minister, Ante Markovic, dramatically rumbled by
Milosevic, who produced Markovic’s own diary for the days when he
claimed to have had meetings with him; the Kosovo Albanian peasant who
said he had never heard of the KLA even though there is a monument to
that terrorist organisation in his own village; and the former head of
the Yugoslav secret services, Radomir Markovic, who not only claimed
that he had been tortured by the new democratic government in Belgrade
to testify against his former boss, but who also agreed, under
cross-examination by Milosevic, that no orders had been given to expel
the Kosovo Albanians and that, on the contrary, Milosevic had
instructed the police and army to protect civilians. And these, note,
were the prosecution witnesses.
Serious doubt has also been cast on some of the most famous atrocity
stories. Remember the refrigerator truck whose discovery in the Danube
in 1999, full of bodies, was gleefully reported as Milosevic was
transferred to The Hague in June 2001? The truck had allegedly been
retrieved from the river and then driven to the outskirts of Belgrade,
where its contents were interred in a mass grave. But cross-examination
showed that there is no proof that the bodies exhumed were the ones in
the truck, nor that any of them came from Kosovo. Instead, it is quite
possible that the Batajnica mass grave dated from the second world war,
while the refrigerator truck may have contained Kurds being smuggled to
Western Europe, the victims of a grisly traffic accident. The
realisation is now dawning that lies were peddled to justify the Kosovo
war just as earnestly as they were to justify the attack on Iraq.
The weakness of the prosecution case was underlined by the fact that
its triumphant conclusion in February was to broadcast a TV documentary
made several years ago. This suggests that its two-year marathon has
not served to advance knowledge of the truth beyond the tall stories
peddled by telly hacks at the time. Even professional supporters of the
ICTY now admit that the only ‘proof’ of Milosevic’s guilt has been
General Sir Rupert Smith’s stated ‘impression’ that Milosevic
controlled the Bosnian Serbs, and Paddy Ashdown’s statement that he
‘warned’ the former Yugoslav head of state that war crimes were being
committed in Kosovo. In February, the chief prosecutor herself, Carla
del Ponte, admitted that she did not have enough evidence to convict
Milosevic on the most serious charges.
The supposedly impartial judges have been deeply complicit in this
prosecution bungling. The ICTY has long been characterised by an
unhealthy community of interests between the judges and the
prosecutors; I have myself heard the first president of the ICTY, Judge
Antonio Cassese, boast that he encouraged the prosecutor to issue
indictments against the Bosnian Serb leaders, a statement which should
disqualify him from serving as a judge ever again. In the Milosevic
trial, the judges have admitted a tawdry parade of ‘expert witnesses’
who are not, in fact, witnesses to anything. In Britain, the role of
experts is rightly under the spotlight after the convictions of some
250 parents found guilty of killing their babies have been thrown into
doubt precisely because they relied on this kind of testimony; but in
the ICTY you can be a ‘witness’ without ever having set foot in
Yugoslavia.
Numerous other judicial abuses have been legitimised by the ICTY. The
use of hearsay evidence is now so out of control that people are often
allowed to testify that they heard someone say something about someone
else. It is common for the ICTY to offer reduced sentences (five years
in one case) to men convicted of hideous crimes, mass murder for
instance, if they agree to testify against Milosevic. The use of
anonymous witnesses is now very widespread, as is the frequency of the
‘closed sessions’: a glance at the ICTY transcripts shows pages and
pages blanked out because sensitive issues have been discussed in court
— sensitive, that is, to the security interests of the Great Powers
which control it, the USA in first place. The ICTY’s nadir came last
December, when the former supreme commander of Nato, Wesley Clark,
testified in the Milosevic trial; the court agreed to let the Pentagon
censor its proceedings, and the transcripts were not released until
Washington had given the green light. So much for the ICTY’s
transparency and independence.
Ironically, Slobbo has one objective ally: the British prime minister.
The possibility is now real that a conviction of Milosevic can be
secured only on the widest possible interpretation of the doctrine of
command responsibility: for instance, that he knew about atrocities
committed by the Bosnian Serbs and did nothing to stop them. But if
Milosevic can be convicted for complicity in crimes committed by people
in a foreign country, over whom he had no formal control, how much
greater is the complicity of the British government in crimes committed
by the US in Iraq, a country with which the UK is in an official
coalition? This is not just a cheap political jibe but a serious
judicial conundrum: the UK is a signatory to the new International
Criminal Court, and so Tony Blair is subject to the jurisdiction of the
new Hague-based body whose jurisprudence will be modelled on that of
the ICTY. So if Slobbo goes down for ten years in Scheveningen jail
because of abuses committed by his policemen, then by rights his
cell-mate should, in time, be Tony.
John Laughland’s latest book is Le Tribunal pénal international:
gardien du nouvel ordre mondial, published by François-Xavier de
Guibert, Paris, 2003.
© 2004 The Spectator
Posted for Fair Use only.
---( 2 )---
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/johns03.html
SWANS, Monday, August 16, 2004
The Debacle At The Hague
by John Steppling
(Swans - August 16, 2004) It's interesting to note how most reasonable
people I know accept the duplicity of corporate mainstream media. The
run up to the invasion of Iraq was rightly seen as crass propaganda by
most right thinking humans. However, these same people have a much
harder time questioning the assumptions behind, and the statistics
about, what is happening in the Sudan now, or Rwanda, and especially
what took place in the former Yugoslavia.
Why is this? Well, looking at Yugoslavia, perhaps it's the liberal
tendency to believe Democrats wouldn't really fabricate a crisis, or
create one, or distort all the information about one. They tend to
think a Democrat wouldn't drop tons of Depleted Uranium (DU) tipped
ordnance on a country unless there was a darn good reason for it -- a
reason of humanitarian resonance. The bombing of Belgrade, under Bill
Clinton, and carried out by Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, is
still widely seen as the way, the only way, to stop the genocide
orchestrated by crazed Serbian killers. Now, I suppose it's time to
look more closely at this word "genocide." The propaganda mill that
Washington drives non-stop has created over the last twenty-some years
a sort of index of buzzwords that it trots out, with appropriate visual
reinforcement, to convince the liberal left (it doesn't have to
convince the right) that sending in the Marines is actually a noble and
compassionate act. Genocide is at the top of this buzzword list. It's a
word that was rarely used after WWII out of a sense for the specialness
of the Holocaust. It has, of late, however been used for almost all
international crises, raising bizarre issues of body counts vs.
varieties of atrocity; the new Olympics of comparative ethical mayhem.
When one needs to focus attention on a particular issue, those running
the show just cry genocide. It is now a shorthand for armchair debate
about intervention (by the colonial West) and about when it should
start; now, or a bit later. In any case, sending in the Marines has
never been, nor will it ever be, a compassionate act. Armies are
created, as are states for that matter, to protect the ruling class and
their interests. The question is always framed with a "how can we stand
by while this happens." sort of formatting (cue visual aids, scene of
refugee camp, hungry children, interview with caring NGO workers). Such
framing creates the atmosphere in which guilt will grow most quickly,
and modern guilt is intimately linked to self-loathing, doubt, and
feelings of alienation. To alleviate this alienation the narcotized
public must be given symbolic acts of compassion and caring... and such
symbolism can be found (in a kind of weird Freudian/Biblical vortex) by
spilling more blood... by symbolic sacrifice in the cloak of
humanitarian intervention. The transgression is erased through the
proof found in the symbolic slaughter. Exploring the underlying causes
of such crises is simply too much work for most citizens. Such is the
modern dysfunctional Empire.
My intention is not to go over the entire history of this complex
region, but to focus on the propaganda surrounding the trial of
Slobodan Milosevic, and especially the current state of his defense and
the collapse of the prosecution's case. I find a great many people who
otherwise might question an illegal institution like the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), willing to accept
this one's dodgy foundations and lack of international credibility
because they have been so convinced of the "evil" of Milosevic. Just a
quick rewind here: Milosevic was kidnapped (illegally, as most kidnaps
are) by Zoran Djindic, former President of Serbia, in exchange for a
promise of one billion in aid (which never came, because the U.S.
decided there was the matter of a debt incurred by Tito that needed to
be made right). Imagine Ariel Sharon being kidnapped -- a genuine
criminal, blood soaked and pathological -- or Henry Kissinger, or John
Negroponte, and carried off to The Hague and tossed in a cell. Imagine
the response of the media. Yet hardly a word of complaint was heard in
the West when Milosevic was snatched. Why? The obvious answer has to do
with the business interests and agenda of the U.S. (and its desire to
further co-opt NATO) to break up the Yugoslav Republic. Since these
same interests control the media, one isn't likely to hear much of a
critique from ABC, CBS, NBC or CNN or FOX, or even The New York Times.
America is a force for good, after all. We only kidnap those who
deserve kidnapping, and Milosevic, by the time he was taken, had been
sufficiently demonized that there seemed little to do except take him
to prison and throw away the key.
The prosecution has spent two years (and called 295 witnesses!) on this
case, and for anyone who has bothered to look hard enough, this
prosecution has utterly failed to prove a single of its accusations.
Neil Clark (in The Guardian), back in February, pointed out that
nothing has been proven and then added, "the nature and extent of the
atrocities themselves have been called into question." I remember CNN
full of the odious Christiane Amanpour (not coincidently the wife of
Albright's errand boy Jamie Rubin, who also not coincidently was Wesley
Clark's assistant during Clark's closed door testimony -- a hearing
that even Milosevic's legal associates were not permitted to attend)
blathering on about how important a trial this was, how international
justice was on the threshold of a great breakthrough, yada yada yada.
Funny, I don't see Christiane, or anyone, talking about this
"important" case anymore. From daily updates to nothing. Why? Again,
the answer lies in the total breakdown of the US/NATO scenario.
Milosevic defended himself, while refusing to acknowledge the
legitimacy of the court. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. The
delusional Carla Del Ponte was possibly, in retrospect for the Empire,
a bad choice to head the prosecution. A dwarfish, churlish, and
unpleasant Swiss woman of seemingly limited intelligence, Del Ponte has
carried on with little prosecutorial skill and even less self-control
when facing a journalist's microphone. Beyond that, the endless list of
witnesses has been revealed (often by deft questioning from Milosevic)
as liars, frauds, and accomplices of US interests. The transcript runs
to 50,000 pages (all materials run to 500,000 pages, and additionally
some 5,000 video cassettes). Milosevic has had to read it all himself
and has been denied visits from family and friends. Even with this head
start the prosecution couldn't mount a coherent case for any of its
charges. Even those who cling to the arguments of journalists like
Timothy Garton Ash, Misha Glenny, or Marlise Simons will be forced to
face the fact that this trial has been a fiasco from its inception.
This, however, brings us to the current situation; now that the
prosecution has rested and that it's Milosevic's turn to defend
himself, the Court is worried (yeah, right) that his health may not
allow him to continue to act as his own counsel. The intention of the
Tribunal is to impose a counsel, to force Milosevic to stop defending
himself. This desperate eleventh-hour measure is a naked reminder, if
any were really needed, of just how far off track this entire
proceeding has gone. The absurdity of using an untreated medical
condition as an excuse to abridge basic rights and silence a defendant
is, possibly, a new low point in modern international law.
Fifty international lawyers have signed a petition sent to the UN
Security General, the Security Council, and the General Assembly
(signed by, among others, Ramsey Clark, USA; Jacques Verges, France;
Sergei Baburin, VP of the Russian Duma; Jitendra Sharma, India; and
drafted by Tiphaine Dickson, Canada). The main thrust is that an
imposition of counsel constitutes a violation of all recognized
judicial rights (and will further aggravate Milosevic's health, rather
than alleviate his medical condition). The International Covenant of
Civil and Political Rights, US Supreme Court decisions, and the Rivonia
Trials (where Mandela defended himself!) are cited as precedent. The
right to defend oneself is central to all international law and the
very structure of adversarial justice. In fact, the only precedent for
imposition of counsel can be found in the Star Chamber, which since the
17th century has stood as symbolic of egregious disregard for basic
defendant's rights. The ICTY now resembles nothing so much as Judge Roy
Bean or the inner chambers of Torqemada, such is the devolution of due
process in our era of Empire. The entire process has been tilted to
favor the prosecution -- Milosevic gets only 150 days to prepare his
defense (the prosecution has had at least since 1999 to prepare
material, and from another perspective has had almost ten years) and
has had no access to the media, something which the prosecution has
been playing to endlessly, voicing their perspective and commentary...
including the creepy appearance of Wesley Clark following his censored
testimony. Notwithstanding the obvious bias, the average citizen of the
West (and certainly of the U.S.) would get the impression (as a
Harper's valentine article to The Hague indicated) that the ICTY has
bent over backwards to accommodate Mr. Milosevic. Such distortion is
typical of the new corporate spin that is lapped up by liberals and
conservatives alike. In The London Times of July 31, 2004, in a review
of Chris Stephen's book "Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan
Milosevic," Janine Di Giovanni points out that "if Judgement Day were
read with no prior knowledge, it would be possible to believe Milosevic
had already been tried and convicted." Stephen's book is the usual
gloss on this subject. It's telling to note that that other Chalabi,
who now runs the Saddam trial, has put an end (after one preliminary
hearing) to any journalists or media inside the courtroom, fearing no
doubt, exactly what has taken place at the ICTY. Clearly, they have
learned their lesson; simply don't allow any kind of due process and
keep it all secret.
Tiphaine Dickson, an international lawyer practicing before the UN
tribunals since 1997, spoke to me about the steady and Orwellian
deterioration of internationally recognized basic rights by the very
bodies whose stated purpose is to enforce respect for human rights.
"The precedents set by the Rwanda and Yugoslav courts are shocking for
defense lawyers who arrive to defend a client at The Hague or Arusha.
Indictments with little or no evidence, disregard for extradition
procedures, piecemeal disclosure, third hand hearsay, drastically
limited cross examination, and modification of rules by judges in
collaboration with the prosecution as trials go along, not to mention
US pressure to speed up the process; all of it is just par for the
course in these Security Council Institutions. I was once asked by a
journalist why I became a political lawyer. My answer was because these
courts insisted on carrying out political trials."
I can't really speak for exactly why otherwise open-minded people feel
so intractable about this subject. Perhaps it's just the Clinton aspect
to the bombing, or more likely, it's just the infantile response one
has in the face of all authority, and the attendant submission to the
illusion of protection that all authority figures provide. Seeking
consensus is part of this childhood fear, the need for the father
figure to be given respect and from which, in return, one will receive
rational security. The sense of hopelessness most people feel today
makes such submission, such yearning for agreement, seem like (and feel
like) the only choice left. This is how propaganda works. One sees it
in the hysteria for Kerry, even though people know protest was silenced
and protesters were stuck in cages outside Fleet Center, and one sees
it in the refusal to look more deeply at the show trials of figures
like Milosevic, who has become a poster boy (along with Saddam, Castro
and all of FARC) for evil and despotism and, of course, terror (never
mind Islam Karamov of Uzbekistan, for instance, is a boon ally, nor
Colombian President Uribe, our partner in the war on drugs, is and was
a known narco-trafficker). The notion of spreading "our" values lies
behind not just Iraq, but behind the destruction of Yugoslavia as well.
An examination of who profits from these exercises in neo-liberal
do-gooding is rarely taken (Camp Bondsteel was built by Kellogg, Brown
and Root... as a quick example). The American force for good has to go
in and save people by killing more of them. Few question the
assumptions behind buzzwords like Srebrenica or ethnic cleansing (get
Sharon on the phone again, OK?) or mass rape or death squads. Evidence
seems unnecessary and increasingly due process seems simply an
irritant, to be done away with, if at all possible. Presumption of
guilt seems no obstacle to a "fair" trial. From Guantánamo Bay or Abu
Ghraib to The Hague is not such a leap. From the Star Chamber or the
Texas Death House, to the irrationality of Carla Del Ponte, Jeffrey
Nice, or the late Richard May (who died of brain cancer mid-trial) is
also but a small step. Crises occur and few ask for what or who created
them. Just send in the UN, or the Marines, and kick some ass, dump some
munitions, and then call in the World Bank and the IMF. A favorite
argument of the liberal left starts with the opening giveaway that
history not be exhumed, and that one should only ask "what is to be
done now?" As if that is the new reality principle, the new
realpolitik. History is increasingly to be ignored or taken on faith
from State Department memos, and that the difficult and often nearly
impossible task of sifting through the remains of cultures and peoples
and villages is just too complicated and time consuming, and often
(most importantly) yields only partial results. Real history is not
made of the whole-cloth (invented) truisms so beloved by the new
liberal journalists that serve as hagiographers for our Imperial class.
It's as if to question the veracity of major magazines and newspapers;
to question the possible agenda of journalists (clinging to jobs where
the paycheck comes from a corporation with a vested interest in the
matter) is too large a leap -- it threatens too much of the bedrock
trust in societal institutions. Without that trust the sense of our
place and role would be threatened, and without that sense, people tend
to reach psychic fail-safe.
The script for the ICTY was to blame Serbian aggression for the wars in
the Balkans. The Serbs must then accept guilt and voilà, history will
be re-written to accommodate the US strategic and business interests.
The destruction of legality evident at the ICTY is important for other
reasons as well. If such kangaroo courts are given credibility and
accepted, then one can pretty well expect a similar erosion of due
process when the courts are prosecuting junkies and homeless people,
black teenagers and Latino gang members. They can all expect to have to
adhere to even more stringent standards of innocence, while Poindexter,
Negroponte or Elliot Abrams can continue to find work in high places
and sleep comfortable in the knowledge that their privileges are
guaranteed. The same folks who lied about WMD previously lied about
Yugoslavia. The National Endowment for Democracy and the co-opted US
media trotted out all manner of myth and fiction, most now roundly
discredited, and yet those myths stuck. Everything from disguising the
identity of the narco-gangsters of the KLA as plucky freedom fighting
underdogs (with help from Paul Wolfowitz and the Balkan Action Council,
and Bob Dole, for whom Albanian-Americans raised over a million dollars
to assist his election campaign -- Diana Johnstone is particularly good
on this subject), to the negative labeling of Milosevic as a
hyper-Nationalist (we all know Bush and Kerry are nothing of the sort)
and a fascist. All managed to find traction in the popular
consciousness on the Balkans. The fundamental illegality and outright
criminality of The Hague is obvious even if one insists on buying into
the rest of the US story on Milosevic. At the very least I would hope
the naked and blatant lack of fairness involved at the ICTY will be
acknowledged, for it is the starting point for a re-examination of this
entire shabby chunk of revisionist history. I hope that at the least,
the biases and contradictions of the jingoistic press will be
denounced; for to continue to accept the glaring lack of impartiality
of this Tribunal, and its coverage, is to accept another step in the
police state's death grip on our existence.
• • • • • •
John Steppling is a LA playwright (Rockefeller fellow, NEA recipient,
and PEN-West winner) and screenwriter (most recent was Animal Factory
directed by Steve Buscemi). He is currently living in Poland where he
teaches at the National Film School in Lodz.
Please, feel free to insert a link to this work on your Web site or to
disseminate its URL on your favorite lists, quoting the first paragraph
or providing a summary. However, please DO NOT steal, scavenge or
repost this work on the Web without the expressed written authorization
of Swans. This material is copyrighted, © John Steppling 2004. All
rights reserved.
==========================
ICDSM - Sezione Italiana
c/o GAMADI, Via L. Da Vinci 27
00043 Ciampino (Roma)
tel/fax +39-06-4828957
email: icdsm-italia @ libero.it
Conto Corrente Postale numero 86557006
intestato ad Adolfo Amoroso, ROMA
causale: DIFESA MILOSEVIC
sito internet:
http://www.pasti.org/linkmilo.htm