Hey Seb,
1 Didn't you say no mass graves had been found?
New mass grave finds in Serbia
Friday, 29 June, 2001
2 Was looking into the Hague trial's extradition illegalities you referred to.
Found these:
Milosevic in the dock
Q&A: Milosevic trial
Your concern is about him being tried for all counts at once, right?
2 comments:
Amongst all the talk of how Milosevic's death has cheated his victims of justice, not nearly enough has been said about where the culpability for this injustice lies. And it seems to me that it lies chiefly with Carla Del Ponte and the UN prosecution team.
Litigation on this scale was impossible, says barrister
Telegraph
13/03/2006
Some sage comments from Seb (yes, he lives!), who I asked about his concerns over the Milosevic trial expressed this time last year:
The concern was for the way that different charges were being bundled together to make sure of a conviction. Ironically it probably gave the court so much information to digest that it prevented them getting him.
Re. the lawyer's claim (in the linked article) that challenges to the legality of the extradition etc. had already been dismissed...that's the point. If you are extradited to face charges, then that is what you should be facing. If they want to try you for something else, they should have to extradite you again. The Dutch court ruled itself not competent to interfere since the court at the Hague was outside its jurisdiction (the pontius pilate strategy) and the fact that the "'the court's appelate chamber, its highest body" has rejected the complaint is irrelevant since the claim is that the court is making up the rules (ie re extradition) as it goes along, and the applelate chamber is part of the court..
Ok, so maybe international law is just realpolitikal score-keeping, and the court in the Hague just score-settling. Hell, Milosevic was probably a nasty piece of work with no end of blood on his hands. I just reckon that the legal bullshit and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on this case is unnecessary.
A final few quotes, re the Tokyo war crimes trials. Obviously, these weren't in the newspapers at the time, but:
General Willoughby, the head of GHQ’s intelligence operations, described the trial as “the worst hypocrisy in recorded history.”
General Elliott Thorpe, whose job it was to decide who should be arrested, described the tribunal as ‘mumbo-jumbo’.
George Kennan who was the State Department observer, described the trial as ‘fundamentally misconceived’ and ‘hocus pocus’
One wonders what people will make of the efforts of Ms. Del Ponte and her well-remunerated crew after the dust has settled, and people with rather longer attention spans than journalists start having a good look at the Hague.
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