The following is from an editorial by Werner Pirker in the German daily newspaper, Junge Welt, Nov. 30, translated by John Catalinotto. Pirker writes about the NATO-created Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, which persecuted President Slobodan Milosevic and other Serb leaders following its creation.

The United Nations Security Council’s unlawfully appointed tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia — only the U.N. General Assembly should have called it into being — is brazenly flaunting its criminal character. Two weeks ago the Croatian general, Ante Gotovina, who was convicted of war crimes in 2005 and sentenced to 18 years in prison, was acquitted in a second trial. Now the former KLA (“Kosovo Liberation Army”) commander and former Kosovo prime minister, Ramush Haradinaj, whose first trial in 2008 had already ended in an acquittal, left the Hague, Netherlands, as a free man.

Even The Hague judges could not dispute that the KLA committed crimes — not only against Serbs and other non-Albanian Kosovars, but also against pro-Yugoslav Albanians who opposed the insurgents’ ethnocentric terror regime.

The court’s opinion, however, was that there was no evidence proving the guilt of Haradinaj and two of his co-defendants. Had the defendants been Serbs, then the Tribunal would have brought the charges under the guarantee of applying the principle — that it had itself invented — that there was a “joint criminal enterprise” (JCE).

In the case of Croatian massacre generals and that of the KLA commander of Western Kosovo known as “the Butcher,” no assumption was made that the defendant was per se a member of a collective group of murderers. According to the logic of The Hague Tribunal, since they are not Serbs, they therefore could not have been involved in a plan that ranged from ethnic cleansing to genocide.

Gotovina was the supreme commander of “Operation Lightning,” which was involved with massive ethnic cleansing to allow for the integration of the hitherto predominantly Serb-inhabited Krajina province into the Croatian federation.

Haradinaj was one of the most brutal enforcers of the full Albanianisation of the southern Serbian province. The alleged ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs and the threat of genocide were pretexts for the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. In reality, the Kosovo residents were fleeing the NATO bombing. After the destruction was completed, the ethnic cleansing began — with the goal of a pure Albanian Kosovo.

The judges of The Hague not only are aware of the crimes committed by the KLA, they also know why they lack of evidence about it. And they said that openly in the justification of their findings. Since everyone who made statements in his first trial that incriminated Haradinaj attracted the murderous arm of the KLA, there were no longer witnesses who would dare to speak out against the organized gang of criminals who were now wielding state power. The Hague Tribunal has apparently subordinated itself to the Mafia’s conception of justice.