Category: Former Yugoslavia

Ground prepared for the UN Security Council to impose another solution — this time, in Kosovo

The last round of talks between the parties on Kosovo was held in Vienna on Saturday, and U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari said that the negotiations ended in deadlock, according to the Associated Press: “I regret to say that at the end of the day, there was no will on the part of the parties to move away from their positions…The parties’ respective statements on Kosovo’s status do not include any common ground.” The AP also reported that “Ahtisaari confirmed he would deliver the contentious package to the U.N. Security Council, which will have the final say on Kosovo’s status, by the end of the month…”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070310/ap_on_re_eu/un_kosovo;
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Reuters reported that “Serbia called on the United Nations on Saturday to reject a Western-backed proposal for the independence of Kosovo as Serbs and Albanians ended a year of talks on the fate of the breakaway province. President Boris Tadic made the appeal in Vienna at a final meeting between leaders of Serbia and Kosovo’s 90-percent Albanian majority before the plan drafted by U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari goes to the Security Council. In a copy of his speech distributed to media, Tadic said he expected ‘serious debate’ at the U.N. Security Council. ‘If Ahtisaari’s proposal was to be accepted, it would be the first time in contemporary history that territory would be taken away from a democratic, peaceful country in order to satisfy the aspirations of a particular ethnic group that already has its nation-state’, he said. ‘The sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia cannot be compromised’, he told the meeting in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace. Ahtisaari has long said an agreed solution is impossible. The West wants the U.N. Security Council to impose a solution by June, seeing no prospect of forcing 2 million Albanians back into the arms of Serbia. Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica … says sometime Serbian ally Russia will use its veto to block Ahtisaari’s plan, or at least delay it. A political source close to the talks said Serbia had again insisted the talks continue. But NATO allies leading 16,500 troops in Kosovo fear delay would only bring violence.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070310/wl_nm/serbia_kosovo1_dc_2;
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Louise Arbour says a number of interesting things – giving glimpses into complex realities

At what was just a routinely-scheduled press conference with journalists on Wednesday, while she was visiting UNHQ/NY, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour of Canada (former judge, and former chief prosecutor at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) said a number of interesting things — all in response to questions from journalists.

Here are excerpts, according to the summary given in a UN Press release:

“Responding to questions about prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere without access to an independent judicial review of their cases, she said that lack of access had been her concern upon the creation of the ‘Guantanamo environment’ — described by some as a ‘legal black hole’. ‘I hope we will see the American judicial system rise to its long-standing reputation as a guardian of fundamental human rights and civil liberties and provide the protection to all that are under the authority, control, and, therefore, in my view, jurisdiction, of the United States’.
…

Regarding this week’s International Court of Justice ruling that Serbia had not been responsible for the genocide of Bosnians in Srebrenica, she said that, based on the broad outlines of that very sophisticated opinion, the decision that would resonate most would be the one dealing with the obligation to prevent genocide. That had now been overshadowed, however, by disappointment that Serbia had been found not to have been an actual perpetrator of the crime of genocide. However, one should not underestimate the resonance that the further opinion would have regarding the obligation of States, not only those complicit or actively implicit in acts of genocide, but also those with a responsibility to prevent it. She pointed out that the International Court of Justice had made extensive use of the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which showed the quality of the jurisprudence emerging from the International Criminal Tribunals. It was difficult to speculate about what the outcome would have been had the late Slobodan Milosevic been found directly and personally responsible for genocide, particularly in relation to Srebrenica, she said. However, there had been no resolution at his trial and the amount of evidence accumulated and made available to the International Court of Justice had obviously been of assistance.

…

[S]he said in reference to the court brief she had recently filed in Iraq against the death penalty that human rights advocacy in court was particularly effective. ‘In fact, it is the form of choice for the advancement of human rights; courts are the primary guardians, not only of human rights standards, but of the application, the implementation of rights’, she stressed. The document filed in the Iraq high tribunal was actually an application for a leave to submit the brief, she said. To the extent there would be opportunities elsewhere to advance important human rights issues — whether in international courts, regional courts, or in a national tribunal — within the limits of her capacity, that was certainly something to be considered. ‘If the courts are willing to listen to us, as I said, I think it’s a form that we should not shy away from’.

…

Asked to comment on the fact that the Human Rights Council had issued eight resolutions on Israel and only one setting up the mission to the Sudan, she said that, while the Council was an intergovernmental body, it was also a quintessential political body. Whatever its mandate, it was a body of 47 Member States, which reacted — or failed to react — to situations rather than to abstract human rights principles. That was why it was so important for the United Nations system to have not just the Human Rights Council, but also special procedures, independent experts, the treaty body system and the Office of the High Commissioner.”

The UN story about Louise Arbour’s remarks is here.

Serbia cannot be held responsible for the Genocide that happened in Srebrenica, International Court of Justice rules

The BBC World Service had the first reports out of the Hague: “The UN’s highest court has cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide in the 1990s Bosnian war. The International Court of Justice was ruling in the first case of a state charged with genocide. If Bosnia’s lawsuit had been successful it could have sought billions of dollars in compensation from Serbia. The court ruled the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica was genocide but said it could not be established that Serbia was complicit…The president of the court, Judge Rosalyn Higgins [of Britain], said: ‘The court finds that the acts of genocide at Srebrenica cannot be attributed to the respondent’s (Serbia) state organs’. Earlier Judge Higgins had rejected Serbia’s argument that the court had no jurisdiction.”

That shows her even-handedness.

The BBC report also noted that “The court’s ruling that Srebrenica did constitute genocide confirmed an earlier ruling in the UN war crimes tribunal…The war crimes tribunal in The Hague has already found individuals guilty of genocide in Bosnia and established the Srebrenica massacre as genocide.”

And the BBC report points out that “The ruling also comes with Serbia still facing challenges linked to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Its passage into the European Union has stalled over its failure to hand over war crimes suspects for trial. It also faces final talks with the United Nations on the future of Kosovo, with the province heading towards near-statehood despite Serbian opposition.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6395791.stm

Certainly we could never accuse the ICJ of having political considerations…

The documentation is now available on the website of the International Court of Justice in the Hague: www.icj-cij.org.

The Associated Press filed a report adding these details: The ICJ “ruled Monday that Serbia failed to use its influence with Bosnian Serbs to prevent the genocide of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, but exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the 1992-95 war. In a lengthy ruling, the International Court of Justice said the leaders of Serbia also failed to comply with its international obligation to punish those who carried out the 1995 massacre in which some 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed. The Serbians ‘should have made the best effort within their power to try and prevent the tragic events then taking shape’, in the U.N. enclave of Srebrenica, the scale of which ‘might have been surmised’, the ruling said.” [I wonder if the Court thought this might also have been surmised by the UN Peacekeeping force there, UNPROFOR, which had a UN SC mandate to use “all available means” to defend the “safe havens” proclaimed gallantly by French General Janvier…but nothing was done, and the Dutch Peacekeepers there, though outnumbered as they later explained, still did nothing, as the men were separated from the women, and led off to their deaths...]

The AP story reports that the ICJ decision “rejected Bosnia’s claim for monetary reparations. ‘Financial compensation is not the appropriate form of reparation for the breach of the obligation to prevent genocide’, the judgment said. [I couldn’t wait to see what is appropriate, according to the Court — an acknowledgement and an apology? But, when the Judgement was finally posted on the www.icj-cij.org website hours later, there was no suggestion for what would be the “appropriate form of reparation”, other then the ICJ ruling itself! This flies in the face of a 25-year trend in international diplomacy, favoring compensation for war crimes, that started with Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait in 1991 by the U.S.-led ‘Desert Storm’ coalition, following its August 1990 invasion] Reading the decision, Judge Rosalyn Higgins said it was clear to leaders in Belgrade that there was a serious risk of a massive slaughter in Srebrenica. Yet Serbia ‘has not shown that it took any initiative to prevent what happened or any action on its part to avert the atrocities which were being committed’. Serbia’s claim that it was powerless to prevent the massacres ‘hardly tallies with their known influence’ over the Bosnian Serb army, the court ruled. The case was the first time an entire nation was held to judicial account for genocide. Earlier Monday, the court ruled that Bosnian Serbs [emphasis added] committed genocide during the Srebrenica massacre. Bosnia claimed that Serbia [emphasis added] bore responsibility for the genocide.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070226/ap_on_re_eu/world_court
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Earlier this month, Carla del Ponti [who must have been privately aware of the direction the wind was blowing from the ICJ] told a conference in Zagreb that “More must be done to search for the truth about crimes committed during the Balkans wars, the Hague tribunal’s chief prosecutor told an international conference held in Croatia. Speaking at the Zagreb conference Establishing the Truth about War Crimes and Conflicts organised by the Croatian NGO Documents, the Belgrade Humanitarian Law Centre and the Sarajevo Research and Documentation Centre, Carla del Ponte argued, ‘It is certain that much more has to be done, and many more perpetrators must be brought to justice for the war crimes [committed in the Balkans]’. At the event held on February 8 and 9, Del Ponte also spoke of the limitations of war crimes tribunals, which, she said, ‘cannot establish all truth and all facts’. She also implied that Serbian authorities were continuing to withhold important archives and documents from the tribunal. ‘In Serbia, the authorities still cannot find where the Milosevic archive has disappeared [to]. Strangely enough, the war time archive of Karadzic has also disappeared without a trace. What a coincidence’, she said. http://www.iwpr.net/?p=tri&s=f&o=333529&apc_state=henftri333521

Carla del Ponte, Prosecutor in the Hague for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, briefs UN Security Council on fugitive suspects

The former Swiss prosecutor told the Security Council that a strong message to should be sent to fugitive suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, saying that the United Nations and the Security Council will do everything possibleld to bring them to justice.

The Yugoslavia Tribunal is set to finish all current trials no later than 2009 and the Rwanda Tribunal is on schedule to complete its current caseload by the end of 2008, the UN Spokesman reported.

Meanwhile, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, (ICC) told the Security Council that he has nearly completed an investigation into some of the worst crimes committed in Darfur, and is preparing to submit evidence to the ICC judges no later than February 2007. The UN Spokesman said that measures are being put in place to protect victims and witnesses.  According to the UN Spokesman, the Sudanese Government had told Moreno-Ocampo in November that 14 individuals had been arrested for violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. The Prosecutor responded that he would request the cooperation of the Government of the Sudan to facilitate a visit by his Office to Sudan next month, to interview the individuals in custody.

Serb awaiting trial in the Hague for ethnic cleansing during 1990s Balkans wars, ends month-long hunger strike

The UN News Centre [the UN uses British English spellings] reports that “The Serbian politician who has been on a hunger strike for almost a month as he awaits trial before the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia announced today that he will resume eating and accept medical treatment now that the court has reversed an earlier decision concerning his counsel.  Vojislav Å eÅ¡elj informed the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that he made his decision after the Tribunal’s appeals chamber earlier today set aside a ruling from its trial chamber imposing standby counsel on him, and its registry made commitments to facilitate many of his requests about the conduct of his defence.  The trial of Mr. Å eÅ¡elj, who faces charges over his role in an ethnic cleansing campaign during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, has been suspended by the Tribunal until he is fit enough to participate fully in the proceedings as a self-represented accused.  The ICTY, which sits in The Hague, said in a press statement that its doctor had begun an examination of Mr. Å eÅ¡elj to assess his condition and what immediate steps are necessary to safeguard his health.  Although he continued to drink water, Mr. Å eÅ¡elj had declined food and medical care since 11 November. The ICTY warned this week that it held grave concerns about his deteriorating health.”

Doctors who examined the Hague prisoner earlier this week reportedly said that he could die in two weeks, if he continued his hunger strike. 

The UN News Centre noted that “The president of the Serbian Radical Party, Mr. Å eÅ¡elj faces charges of crimes against humanity and others relating to the persecutions of Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb people and their expulsions from area of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Vojvodina region of Serbia, between August 1991 and September 1993.  Prosecutors allege Mr. Å eÅ¡elj participated in a joint criminal enterprise with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, among others, that led to the extermination and expulsion of non-Serb people.”

Mr. Milosevic died earlier this year (in March 2006) while on trial in the Hague, disappointing many who wanted to see a court decision on his responsibility for war crimes throughout the former Yugoslavia.

The UN News Center added that “In granting Mr. Å eÅ¡elj’s appeal, the ICTY appeals chamber found that the trial chamber had abused its discretion by ordering standby counsel without first establishing additional obstructionist behaviour by the accused that would warrant such an intervention.   That move meant Mr. Å eÅ¡elj was not given a real opportunity to show that, despite his conduct during the pre-trial period, he now understood that to be permitted to conduct his own defence he would have to comply with the ICTY’s rules of evidence and procedure and was willing to do so.   If Mr. Å eÅ¡elj again behaves in an obstructionist way, jeopardizing the likelihood of a fair and expeditious trial, and the trial chamber considers standby counsel should again be imposed, the appeals chamber said a list of such counsel should first be provided to Mr. Å eÅ¡elj and he should be allowed to select a lawyer from that list.” http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20900&Cr=icty&Cr1=  

Earlier this week, a spokesperson for the War Crimes Tribunal, Refik Hodžic, told journalists in the Hague that Vojislav Šešelj – who faces charges over his role in an ethnic cleansing campaign during the Balkan wars of the 1990s – has legal avenues open to pursue any of his requests or complaints about the Tribunal.

Mr. Hodžic said that “the only way for him [Vojislav Šešelj ] to address the issue of self-representation is through the courtroom, through him taking part in the court process,” noting that the 52-year-old accused began his hunger strike while he was representing himself.

Last week, ICTY judges assigned defence counsel to the accused, saying he had persistently obstructed the proper conduct of the trial since resuming self-representation in late October.

“But he has also made other less publicized demands, such as that the Tribunal approach a foreign State in order to unfreeze assets he holds in overseas bank accounts,” according to another story from the UN News Centre.