Editorial: Tribunal on trial with Milosevic

In the early 1990s the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia looked like an unarmed hunter pursuing the perpetrators of the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. As time went by the impression was reinforced. It landed many small fish, nearly 80 all told, but the big ones escaped. Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic walked the streets of Bosnia with impunity and Slobodan Milosevic went on to lead Serbia into the disastrous conflict over Kosovo.

Now things are different. Milosevic, the biggest fish of them all, is facing the tribunal charged with murder, persecution, mass deportation, torture and unlawful imprisonment. Most Western commentators blame him for striking the spark that set off the Balkan Wars of the 1990s during which it has been estimated 275,000 people died. Although the weight of the evidence seems more than enough to bring in a verdict of guilty there is something more at stake in this trial.

In a sense it is not only the accused who is on trial but the tribunal itself and beyond that the nascent system of international criminal justice. The slightest hint of a pre-ordained judgment or any suggestion of unfairness could have far-reaching political consequences in the Balkans and hinder efforts to build a workable system of international criminal law.

Milosevic knows all of these things and they underpin his courtroom strategy which, on the face of it, seems contradictory. On one hand he refuses to recognise the tribunal, on the other he stands before it to make a speech in his own defence. But there is nothing contradictory about his purpose. With the unerring cunning of a demagogue, he is acting out a role at The Hague which is calculated to show the tribunal in the worst possible light.

Not only does he claim the trial is illegal but he alleges it is being conducted as a show trial by his political enemies. On the first point he has had little success. On the second point he has scored a couple of hits. His persistent and unjustifiable complaints about the status of the tribunal and the attitude of the prosecutor eventually drew an injudicious reaction from the presiding judge, Richard May of Britain.

Judge May told Milosevic his views of the tribunal were irrelevant and cut off his microphone. For a fleeting moment the man once known as the Butcher of the Balkans looked like a victim; the prisoner denied his rights.

Later, in his response to the prosecution's opening address, he struck some telling blows as he accused the Nato powers of being the ones who committed atrocities during the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo.

Ostensibly he was addressing the three judges at The Hague. In fact he was playing to the millions of people in his native Serbia who have been watching his every move on live television. He told them that they were in the dock along with him and that the whole nation was on trial.

So while accusing the prosecutors of running a political trial, he has politicised it for his own purposes and this is where the danger lies for the tribunal and the international criminal justice system as a whole.

For the sake of the tribunal, the judges must be scrupulously fair lest they give any grist to support Milosevic's claim that this is a political trial conducted without true regard to the tenets of natural justice.

Even more important is the larger question of the international justice system. Most countries, including New Zealand, have signed a treaty to set up a permanent International Criminal Court to deal with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

By any objective standard this can only be good for a world rapidly being integrated by technology. Yet some countries, most notably the United States, have been reluctant to accept the idea of an International Criminal Court, principally because they fear it could be used as a political weapon against them. They are unlikely to be easily persuaded, but a necessary beginning is to give the rest of the world confidence that justice can be fairly handed out, even to a head of state like Milosevic.

To do that, the judges in The Hague will have to stick rigidly to the evidence and legal arguments and steadfastly ignore the defendant's attempts to turn the court into a political soapbox. The prosecutors have hooked their fish and they will probably land it. But that is not enough. It is not a matter of whether they land it, but how.

Feature: Yugoslavia

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

Serbian Ministry of Information

Serbian Radio - Free B92

Otpor: Serbian Student Resistance Movement

Macedonian Defence Ministry

Albanians in Macedonia Crisis Centre

Kosovo information page