http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070308&articleId=5021
Yugoslavia: Human Rights Watch in Service to the War Party
by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson and George Szamuely
Global Research, March 9, 2007
Zmag.org - 2007-02-25
Part 2: HRW as a Campaigner for the NATO Wars in the Balkans
From the very beginning of the contests over the fate of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), HRW challenged its territorial integrity and supported the dismemberment of the unitary state, a militarized response to the armed conflicts that ensued, and most vocally of all, the meting out of “justice” to the wrongdoers. In a commentary in the November 10, 1990 New York Times, Helsinki Watch Executive Director Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson urged SFRY’s breakup and the provision of Western aid to any breakaway republics that might “protect the rights of all their citizens.”[46] These authors failed to give the slightest weight to the fact that the declarations of independence within the breakaway republics were contrary to both federal and republican constitutions, not to mention international law—including the Helsinki Final Act.[47]
Most important, Laber and Anderson were blind to the fact that pressures for independence within the republics and provinces expressed a surge of nationalism, rather than any concern for the rights of “all their citizens.” Writing about the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Robert Hayden observed that “the free elections that marked the end of Communism, in November 1990,…[were] essentially an ethnic census. Given the chance to vote as Bosnians, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina chose instead to vote, overwhelmingly, as Muslims, Serbs, and Croats.”[48] Obviously, this did not bode well for the rights of minorities. In a letter responding to Laber and Anderson's call for the dismemberment of the SFRY, Hayden pointed out that “Those who would break up the country are strong nationalists, not likely to treat minorities within their own borders well.” Instead, it was only the unified federal state of Yugoslavia that provided protection for minorities—and very possibly would have continued to do so, had it not been attacked, delegitimized, and dissolved. “It seems truly bizarre,” Hayden noted presciently, “that ‘human rights’ activists so cavalierly advocate policies that are likely to turn Yugoslavia into the Lebanon of Europe.”[49]
Hayden's warning was vindicated by history. The kind of recommendations made by Laber and Anderson , and more important but similar pressures from foreign states, most notably Germany and the United States , proved immensely destructive of human rights. However, although damaging to human rights, HRW’s policies were closely aligned with those of the U.S. government and George Soros, both major drivers of the neoliberal restructuring of Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet bloc, with Soros himself deeply interested in the Balkans, helping to found and to fund media organizations in Kosovo and elsewhere that focus on the Balkans, as well as a major contributor to HRW.[50] Both of these state and non-governmental actors steadily supported the dismemberment of a semi-socialist Yugoslavia and its transformation into mini-states that in turn would be Western clients and open to foreign investment.[51]
The formation of the ICTY, created and effectively controlled by the United States and its allies,[52] has played a vital role in this process as well, and there has been a long tacit mutual support and commonalty of policy and practice among these parties.
An important mechanism of dismantlement of Yugoslavia was to make the Serbs the unique arch-villains and to forestall settlement in the alleged interest of ”justice.”[53] This demonization was strictly politically based—the villainy was broadly based, as many analysts and participants have noted,[54] but the critics of demonization could make no headway against the winds of power and propaganda, to which HRW was a major contributor. It was Milosevic and the Serb drive for a “Greater Serbia” that allegedly explained all,[55] even though Milosevic signed on to each and every peace proposal advanced in the key years 1992-1995,[56] and even though the Clinton administration and Izetbegovic sabotaged them all until Dayton,[57] with the Clinton team eventually using the 1999 Rambouillet Conference strictly as a means of clearing the ground for war.[58]
In December 1992, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger called for a “second Nuremberg ” tribunal to bring justice to the embroiled Yugoslavia , naming Milosevic, six other Serb officials, and three Croats as its proper targets. “We know that crimes against humanity have occurred,” Eagleburger said, “and we know when and where they occurred. We know, moreover, which forces committed those crimes, and under whose command they operated. And we know, finally, who the political leaders are and to whom those military commanders were—and still are—responsible.”[59] Within less than three months, the Security Council adopted the first of its resolutions during 1993 that established an “international tribunal…for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.”[60]
Later that same year, HRW also called for the prosecution of no fewer than 29 different individuals by name, ranging “from the lowest prison guard to the former Yugoslav Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav National Army.”[61] Of course, the Nuremberg tribunal had focused on the “supreme international crime,” but just as HRW has ruled out this crime—of aggression—as part of its list of human rights crimes, so did the founding Statute of the Tribunal,[62] understandably as that Statute was drafted by U.S. officials who wanted to be free of any obstruction to their own cross-border attacks. The point was to focus on the target Serbs and stave-off a negotiated settlement in the alleged interests of “justice,” until a proper political result could be obtained.
Michael Scharf, a former State Department insider, acknowledged that the ICTY was organized as “little more than a public relations device,” a “useful policy tool,” that could “fortify the international political will to employ economic sanctions or use force.”[63] But this only acknowledges what should be obvious from the ICTY’s origins, structure and performance: Namely, that the ICTY was an integral part of war-planning and war-making operations, and that it is neither independent nor designed to produce anything but a strictly politicized “justice” for Yugoslavia. As Michael Mandel argues, the ICTY was used by the U.S. policymakers “to justify their intention to go to war…by branding their proposed enemies as Nazis,” and by this means to “derail the peace process.”[64] HRW has also been a part of this war-making apparatus; as we have seen, its leaders have steadily called for “justice” and if need be war to bring the villains—at least the Arch Villains—to pay for their sins.
HRW regularly cites ICTY findings as unquestionable truth, and it is proud to have helped the ICTY to collect data on Serb crimes, publicize those crimes and the ICTY’s good work—and “to influence the U.S. government to condition financial aid for Yugoslavia on cooperation with the tribunal.”[65] Of course HRW has treated the ICTY as an arm of genuine justice, just as the ICTY has depended on nongovernmental organizations such as HRW as well as NATO officials for supposedly unbiased information. In a commentary titled “Human Rights, American Wrongs,” Kenneth Roth, while assailing the U.S. rejection of the International Criminal Court, stated that “ Washington says it would never deploy US troops where they would be subject to an international tribunal. But…US troops in Bosnia and Kosovo have been subject to the jurisdiction of the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal. So were US bombers over Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia and Kosovo in 1999. The crisis over the International Criminal Court is a manufactured one.”[66] This is a clear illustration of Roth’s convenient self-deception, as he fails to recognize that the ICTY was U.S.-controlled and that its failure ever to indict any U.S. officials was a foregone conclusion.
Even Jamie Shea, NATO's chief of public relations during the 1999 war, admitted that “NATO countries are those that have provided the finance to set up the Tribunal,…are amongst the majority financiers….I am certain that when Justice Arbour goes to Kosovo and looks at the facts she will be indicting people of Yugoslav nationality and I don't anticipate any others at this stage.”[67] But nowhere was the truth of this point more dramatically evident than in the ICTY's own performance, as when Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte refused to open an investigation of possible NATO war crimes on the grounds that the 495 dead Serbs documented by the ICTY's investigation were an insufficiently large number—”there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of genocide or crimes against humanity,” in the words of the Prosecutor's Final Report.[68] But under the ICTY's Statute, the Prosecutor is obligated not only to investigate but to prepare indictments where a prima facie case for crimes against humanity exists.[69] There is also the awkwardness that Milosevic’s initial indictment rested on a “crime base” of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians, and of these, only 45 were reported to have died prior to the start of NATO's war.[70]
But even more remarkable, the indictment of Milosevic et al. for Kosovo was hastily put together based on unverified information supplied to the ICTY by the U.S. and U.K.; and it was issued two months into NATO's war, just as NATO had begun stepping up its bombing of Serb civilian facilities and was in need of a public relations boost to offset what Amnesty International (but not HRW) called war crimes.[71] So in a tacit alliance with HRW as well as the attacking (and ICTY-funding) countries, the ICTY actively supported commission of both the “supreme international crime” and its plain vanilla derivatives.
Michael Mandel shows that during 1998, just as NATO was building up its forces in preparation for the 1999 military attack on Yugoslavia, the ICTY greatly intensified its investigations and charges against the Serbs.[72] HRW did exactly the same: It had already written to Louise Arbour by early March, 1998, urging the Office of the Prosecutor to open an investigation into Serb-perpetrated atrocities,[73] and HRW was very quick to place monitors on the ground inside Kosovo in early 1998, and to step up its accumulation of evidence against Belgrade. It worked alongside the ICTY as a PR-arm of NATO, helping to create the moral environment for NATO's commission of the supreme international crime on March 24, 1999. It should be noted that, despite a period of intense anti-Serb propaganda that lasted some 12 to 15 months before the bombing war began, NATO Secretary General George Robertson told the British House of Commons that, “until Racak…the KLA were responsible for more deaths in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities had been.”[74] And it is now well established that during that period the KLA was getting funds and training from the CIA.[75] These were points of no concern whatsoever to the ICTY and HRW.
In sum, HRW’s performance in the Balkans has been perfectly geared to serve the aims of U.S. policy, but as that policy was one of keeping the pot of armed conflict boiling in order to dismantle the SFRY and to weaken Serbia by putting an alleged pursuit of “justice” ahead of settling a series of grave internal conflicts, the effect of HRW policy has been extremely damaging to human rights. The same was and remains true in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan . In each instance HRW has not challenged the privileges enjoyed by the aggressor states in their regular commission of the supreme international crime, thereby giving its tacit approval to this most fundamental of human rights violations—and in the case of the SFRY, actively urging aggression.[76] By virtue of biases which regularly underrate U.S. and allied human rights violations and inflate those of their targets, HRW facilitates the supreme international crime.
(2 - continues)
Endnotes to Part 2
46. Jeri Laber and Kenneth Anderson, “Why Keep Yugoslavia One Country?” New York Times, November 10, 1990.
47. See the Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States (a.k.a. the Helsinki Final Act), August 1, 1975. As of the date on which the Laber - Anderson commentary appeared in the New York Times (indeed, straight through the Dayton Peace Accords of November 21 1995, which formally brought to an end all but one of the internal wars over the SFRY), the "inviolability of frontiers" (Art. III) and the "territorial integrity of states" (Art. IV) so loudly proclaimed by Helsinki could only refer to the internationally recognized border that separated the SFRY from the other sovereign states that neighbored it—not the internal borders that separated its six republics from one another. For foreign states and non-governmental actors to have regarded the internal republican borders as the relevant "frontiers" under Helsinki principles not only contradicted the actual Declaration at Helsinki, but was a highly provocative interference in the sovereign affairs of the SFRY.
48. Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 91-92.
49. Robert Hayden, "Don't Turn Yugoslavia Into Europe's Lebanon," Letter, New York Times, December 3, 1990.
50. See notes 4 and 5, above.
48. Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 91-92.
49. Robert Hayden, "Don't Turn Yugoslavia Into Europe's Lebanon," Letter, New York Times, December 3, 1990.
50. See notes 4 and 5, above.
51. In his book Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005), John Norris, a State Department spokesman during the 1999 U.S. war against Yugoslavia, writes that “it was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—that best explains NATO’s war” (p. xxiii). Basically, Norris denies that the Clintonites’ war had anything to do with humanitarian principles—the rhetoric of humanitarianism aside.
52. See Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Ch. 4, “The War Crimes Tribunal," pp. 117-146; and Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge, esp. the Annex: Memorandum “On the Indictment of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…,” pp. 353-356.
53. See, e.g., "No Kosovo Settlement Without Accountability for War Crimes," Human Rights Watch Press release, February 6, 1999.—The earliest high-profile use of the slogan "no peace without justice" in relation to the former Yugoslavia appears to have been a resolution introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rhode Island's Patrick J. Kennedy, War Crimes in Bosnia, November 20, 1995. -- The relevant paragraph stated: "The United States should oppose amnesty for any indicted war criminals. On this anniversary [of the Nuremberg Tribunal], as the world hopes for peace in the Balkans, it is the responsibility of Congress to say unequivocally that there can be no peace without justice." The very same day, the New York Times's veteran columnist Anthony Lewis recounted a discussion he had had with the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone: "No Peace Without Justice," it was titled (November 20, 1995). "As the Tribunal's Chief Justice Richard Goldstone has repeatedly said, there can be no peace without justice," the Wall Street Journal editorialized. "On the 50-year anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, that's worth remembering" ("Prisoners of Peace," November 21, 1995). Less than one month later, John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, picked up the same theme when he noted that one of the positives of the Dayton Accords was its pledge of cooperation with the Yugoslav Tribunal: "There will be no peace without justice." ("U.S. official: No cooperation on human rights issues by Serbs," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 13, 1995.)
54. See, e.g., Yossef Bodansky, Some Call It Peace: Waiting for the War in the Balkans (International Media Corp., 1996); Peter Brock, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting. Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia (GM Books, 2005); David Chandler, "Western Intervention and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia," in Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 19-30; Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999); Brendan O'Shea, The Modern Yugoslav Conflict 1991 - 1995: Perception, deception, dishonesty (Frank Cass, 2005); David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995); Dennison Rusinow, Ed., Yugoslavia: A Fractured Federalism (Wilson Center Press, 1988); Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (The Brookings Institution, 1995); Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (Random House, 1996).
55. These sweeping charges represent an amalgam of the no fewer than eight different indictments and amendments thereof of Slobodan Milosevic et al. for Serb conduct in Kosovo (May 22, 1999; June 29, 2001; and October 29, 2001), Croatia (October 8, 2001; October 23, 2002; and July 28, 2004); and Bosnia and Herzegovina (November 22, 2001; November 22, 2002).
52. See Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, Ch. 4, “The War Crimes Tribunal," pp. 117-146; and Köchler, Global Justice or Global Revenge, esp. the Annex: Memorandum “On the Indictment of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia…,” pp. 353-356.
53. See, e.g., "No Kosovo Settlement Without Accountability for War Crimes," Human Rights Watch Press release, February 6, 1999.—The earliest high-profile use of the slogan "no peace without justice" in relation to the former Yugoslavia appears to have been a resolution introduced into the U.S. House of Representatives by Rhode Island's Patrick J. Kennedy, War Crimes in Bosnia, November 20, 1995. -- The relevant paragraph stated: "The United States should oppose amnesty for any indicted war criminals. On this anniversary [of the Nuremberg Tribunal], as the world hopes for peace in the Balkans, it is the responsibility of Congress to say unequivocally that there can be no peace without justice." The very same day, the New York Times's veteran columnist Anthony Lewis recounted a discussion he had had with the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone: "No Peace Without Justice," it was titled (November 20, 1995). "As the Tribunal's Chief Justice Richard Goldstone has repeatedly said, there can be no peace without justice," the Wall Street Journal editorialized. "On the 50-year anniversary of the Nuremberg trials, that's worth remembering" ("Prisoners of Peace," November 21, 1995). Less than one month later, John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, picked up the same theme when he noted that one of the positives of the Dayton Accords was its pledge of cooperation with the Yugoslav Tribunal: "There will be no peace without justice." ("U.S. official: No cooperation on human rights issues by Serbs," Deutsche Presse-Agentur, December 13, 1995.)
54. See, e.g., Yossef Bodansky, Some Call It Peace: Waiting for the War in the Balkans (International Media Corp., 1996); Peter Brock, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting. Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia (GM Books, 2005); David Chandler, "Western Intervention and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia," in Philip Hammond and Edward S. Herman, Eds., Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis (Pluto Press, 2000), pp. 19-30; Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (University of Michigan Press, 1999); Brendan O'Shea, The Modern Yugoslav Conflict 1991 - 1995: Perception, deception, dishonesty (Frank Cass, 2005); David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995); Dennison Rusinow, Ed., Yugoslavia: A Fractured Federalism (Wilson Center Press, 1988); Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (The Brookings Institution, 1995); Warren Zimmerman, Origins of a Catastrophe (Random House, 1996).
55. These sweeping charges represent an amalgam of the no fewer than eight different indictments and amendments thereof of Slobodan Milosevic et al. for Serb conduct in Kosovo (May 22, 1999; June 29, 2001; and October 29, 2001), Croatia (October 8, 2001; October 23, 2002; and July 28, 2004); and Bosnia and Herzegovina (November 22, 2001; November 22, 2002).
56. Among the ceasefires and peace proposals that Milosevic supported were the Brioni Pact of 1991, the Vance Plan of 1991, the Cutileiro (or Lisbon) Plan of 1992 (vetoed by the Bosnian Muslims), the Vance-Owen Plan of 1993 (a plan eventually sabotaged by U.S. authorities, as Owen describes in his memoirs), the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan of 1993 (vetoed by the United States), the European Action Plan of 1993 (also sabotaged by the United States), the Contact Group Plan of 1994, the extension of the Carter ceasefire beyond May 1, 1995, and, of course, the Dayton process, about which Richard Holbrooke observed of the twentieth, and next-to-last, day, the U.S. was "going to close down in the morning—unless Milosevic could save the negotiations." See To End A War (New York: The Modern Library, Rev. Ed., 1999), pp. 306-312.
57. Writing about the new Clinton Administration's efforts in early 1993 to kill-off the Vance - Owen Peace Plan, which allocated some 42 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Pale Serbs, rather than the 49 percent under Dayton, chief negotiator David Owen explains that Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature from the plan because "he felt encouraged by US attitudes to hold out for a better deal." Owen reproduces an excerpt from an early 1993 telegram he sent to an aid in Washington. "We have this Administration briefing the press in a way that could not but stiffen those Muslims who want to continue the war. We have [the Sarajevo Government's UN Representative Muhamed] Sacirbey openly telling everyone that the US Administration has said they should not feel any need to sign the map." Later, Owen adds that "The new administration had already made up their mind and were intent on killing off the [Vance - Owen Peace Plan]….They promised to come up with an alternative policy over the next few weeks, but in the meantime seemed intent on killing off a detailed plan backed by all their allies and close to being agreed by the parties. It was by any standard of international diplomacy outrageous conduct." Balkan Odyssey, pp. 111 - 119. —Here we add simply that this was in early 1993; the Dayton Peace Accords were not signed until nearly three years later, in late 1995.
58. The Rambouillet Conference was held at the Chateau Rambouillet in France from February 6 - 20, 1999. Its ostensible purpose was to negotiate an interim political settlement to the conflict over the Serbian province of Kosovo. But the conference was held under extreme duress, as at no point were the Serb negotiators free from the threat of military attack by NATO, which six days prior to the conference had issued an Activation Order "authoriz[ing] air strikes against targets on [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] territory" (January 30, 1999). As the former State Department official George Kenney reported shortly after the war, a "senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher that the Serbs could accept'. The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason." See Marc Weller, Ed., The Crisis in Kosovo 1989 - 1999 (Documents and Analysis Publishing Ltd., 1999), Ch. 15, "The Rambouillet Conference," pp. 392-474, which includes a copy of NATO's Activation Order (p. 416); and George Kenney, "Rolling Thunder: the Rerun," The Nation, June 14, 1999.
59. Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Names Figures It Wants Charged with War Crimes," New York Times, December 17, 1992.
57. Writing about the new Clinton Administration's efforts in early 1993 to kill-off the Vance - Owen Peace Plan, which allocated some 42 percent of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the Pale Serbs, rather than the 49 percent under Dayton, chief negotiator David Owen explains that Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature from the plan because "he felt encouraged by US attitudes to hold out for a better deal." Owen reproduces an excerpt from an early 1993 telegram he sent to an aid in Washington. "We have this Administration briefing the press in a way that could not but stiffen those Muslims who want to continue the war. We have [the Sarajevo Government's UN Representative Muhamed] Sacirbey openly telling everyone that the US Administration has said they should not feel any need to sign the map." Later, Owen adds that "The new administration had already made up their mind and were intent on killing off the [Vance - Owen Peace Plan]….They promised to come up with an alternative policy over the next few weeks, but in the meantime seemed intent on killing off a detailed plan backed by all their allies and close to being agreed by the parties. It was by any standard of international diplomacy outrageous conduct." Balkan Odyssey, pp. 111 - 119. —Here we add simply that this was in early 1993; the Dayton Peace Accords were not signed until nearly three years later, in late 1995.
58. The Rambouillet Conference was held at the Chateau Rambouillet in France from February 6 - 20, 1999. Its ostensible purpose was to negotiate an interim political settlement to the conflict over the Serbian province of Kosovo. But the conference was held under extreme duress, as at no point were the Serb negotiators free from the threat of military attack by NATO, which six days prior to the conference had issued an Activation Order "authoriz[ing] air strikes against targets on [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] territory" (January 30, 1999). As the former State Department official George Kenney reported shortly after the war, a "senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher that the Serbs could accept'. The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason." See Marc Weller, Ed., The Crisis in Kosovo 1989 - 1999 (Documents and Analysis Publishing Ltd., 1999), Ch. 15, "The Rambouillet Conference," pp. 392-474, which includes a copy of NATO's Activation Order (p. 416); and George Kenney, "Rolling Thunder: the Rerun," The Nation, June 14, 1999.
59. Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Names Figures It Wants Charged with War Crimes," New York Times, December 17, 1992.
60. UN Security Council Resolution 808 (S/RES/808), February 22, 1993. The exact same phrasing appears as Article 1 of the Statute of the Tribunal. Also see UN Security Council Resolution 827 (S/RES/827), May 25, 1993.
61. Prosecute Now!, Helsinki Rights Watch, August 1, 1993. As this advocacy document explained, "Helsinki Watch's failure to name other heads of state and top military commanders as defendants in no way is intended to absolve them of responsibility. While we have not presented such information here, we believe that many senior officials should also be found criminally liable for aiding and abetting in the 'planning, preparation, or execution' of war crimes."
62. See Statute of the International Tribunal Adopted May 25, 1993, along with subsequent updates. None of articles 2 through 5, which run the gamut including breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the laws and customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity, so much as mentions the "supreme international crime"—or anything remotely like it.
63. Michael P. Scharf, "Indicted for War Crimes, Then What?" Washington Post, October 3, 1999 (as posted to the Public International Law & Policy Group website).
64. Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 126.
65. “The Milosevic Case,” in When People’s Basic Rights Are Trampled, Human Rights Watch, undated press release.
62. See Statute of the International Tribunal Adopted May 25, 1993, along with subsequent updates. None of articles 2 through 5, which run the gamut including breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the laws and customs of war, genocide, and crimes against humanity, so much as mentions the "supreme international crime"—or anything remotely like it.
63. Michael P. Scharf, "Indicted for War Crimes, Then What?" Washington Post, October 3, 1999 (as posted to the Public International Law & Policy Group website).
64. Mandel, How America Gets Away With Murder, p. 126.
65. “The Milosevic Case,” in When People’s Basic Rights Are Trampled, Human Rights Watch, undated press release.
66. Kenneth Roth, “Human Rights, American Wrongs,” Financial Times, July 1, 2002.
67. Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 16, 1999.—The very next day, Shea responded to much the same question: "As you know, 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. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law." (Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 17, 1999.)
68. See Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Office of the Prosecutor, ICTY, June, 2000, par. 90. Also see the accompanying Press Statement (PR/P.I.S./510-e), ICTY, June 13, 2000.
69. See Article 18 of the ICTY's Statute, "Investigation and preparation of indictment" (1993, 2006). Par. 4 states: "Upon a determination that a prima facie case exists, the Prosecutor shall prepare an indictment containing a concise statement of the facts and the crime or crimes with which the accused is charged under the Statute."
70. See Louise Arbour, Prosecutor of the Tribunal Against Slobodan Milosevic et al. (IT-99-37), Schedules A - G, May 22, 1999. —These schedules list the names of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians whom, in this particular case, constituted a sufficient "crime base" to bring the indictment. As noted, however, the deaths of only the 45 persons named in Schedule A ("Racak," January 15, 1999) date from prior to the start of NATO's war.
71. See Amnesty International,
67. Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 16, 1999.—The very next day, Shea responded to much the same question: "As you know, 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. We are the upholders, not the violators, of international law." (Press Conference Given by NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea, May 17, 1999.)
68. See Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO Bombing Campaign Against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Office of the Prosecutor, ICTY, June, 2000, par. 90. Also see the accompanying Press Statement (PR/P.I.S./510-e), ICTY, June 13, 2000.
69. See Article 18 of the ICTY's Statute, "Investigation and preparation of indictment" (1993, 2006). Par. 4 states: "Upon a determination that a prima facie case exists, the Prosecutor shall prepare an indictment containing a concise statement of the facts and the crime or crimes with which the accused is charged under the Statute."
70. See Louise Arbour, Prosecutor of the Tribunal Against Slobodan Milosevic et al. (IT-99-37), Schedules A - G, May 22, 1999. —These schedules list the names of 344 dead Kosovo Albanians whom, in this particular case, constituted a sufficient "crime base" to bring the indictment. As noted, however, the deaths of only the 45 persons named in Schedule A ("Racak," January 15, 1999) date from prior to the start of NATO's war.
71. See Amnesty International,