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The trial lasted longer than the war
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 at 12:29 AM
Leader
From the National Post editorial on Slobodan Milosevic:
Finally, Milosevic showed up international humanitarian law for the fragile -- often vain -- project it is. When Milosevic was hauled to The Hague in 2001, the event was hailed as a welcome landmark: For the first time in history, a head of state and government had been brought before a war crimes tribunal to answer for his actions. But outside the Balkans, the world lost interest as the proceedings ground tediously onward. As John O'Sullivan notes on these pages, rather than bringing closure to victims, the trial merely gave a soapbox to Milosevic so he could rant at the West. This spectacle, too, is being repeated in Baghdad.
I haven't written anything on the death of Milosevic until now, because I've been trying to focus on the big picture. I'll let others weave conspiracy theories about whether Slobo was murdered, committed suicide, or died a natural death.
For me, it was remarkable that he was still in the middle of this absurd court case when it happened.
The National Post captured my distaste perfectly.
So what do we do about it? My thinking is that it is a mistake to treat these sorts of crimes as if there are crimes in the first place. The law courts, in particular in the West, are not suited to the prosecution of these crimes, as the Milosevic debacle clearly showed.
A war is fought, a war criminal is caught, but then he is tried as if he held up a convenience store. Lawyers try to weave a direct connection between the dictator and the deaths of this or that particular group of victims. Another group of lawyers file motion after motion in order to stall for time.
Why stall for time? Because war crimes are political and ideological crimes, committed for political or ideological reasons. A collapsed political system or a discredited ideology lose their grip on the public interest quickly as they are replaced with a new system and a different ideology. So stalling succeeds when it puts the ex-dictator past the point when the public cares any more.
As horrendous as Nazi crimes were, when an aging man is pulled in front of a judge accused of being a German prison guard at a concentration camp, more than a few people always wonder whether the past should just remain in the past. When the majority of people think like that, the dictator's defence lawyer knows he has a good chance of winning.
Maybe we need to remain in the realm of political expediency and ideological purity instead of shifting into the world of judicial minutiae in a situation in which we have captured a dictator like Milosevic or Sadaam.
- Were war crimes committed? Yes.
- Were they widespread, over a large area, over a long period of time, and involving an overwhelmingly large organized group of government employees, military and civilian? Yes.
- Did the dictator give speeches, both those aimed at a domestic audience and those presented to the world community, in which he encouraged those crimes against a particular and identifiable group? Yes.
- Did the retinue of cabinet ministers and hand-picked security people surrounding the dictator exclude those in the targeted groups? Yes.
- Is there reason to doubt that free and fair elections were held in this country? Yes.
Answer yes to these questions, provide and evaluate the evidence, and the dictator is found guilty. Over in less than a month.
This approach doesn't demand a direct link between the dictators desk and the crimes, but then a dictator might not have left one. But the political and ideological links remain, and they are not easily dismissed or discredited.
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Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at stevejanke.com.