Submitted by Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
Prosecutors before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague are expected to present closing arguments in the years long trial of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić for eleven counts of war crimes, including genocide charges for his involvement in the massacres of Bosnian Muslims and Ethnic Croats during his reign as the President of the Republika Srpska in the Bosnian war that was waged in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia.
Karadžić was a fugitive from justice from 1996 until his arrest in Belgrade in 2008 where shortly thereafter he was extradited to The Netherlands pending charges before the ICTY. He was preceded in trial by Slobodan Milošević, the former President of Serbia but who died prior to the conclusion of his trial. General Ratko Mladić, a Bosnian Serb military official, is also standing before the ICTY for events during the Srebrenica Massacre.
The prosecution expects that if most of the charges result in convictions, Karadžić likely will remain imprisoned for life.
Karadžić is accused of directing atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992 to 1995 war that claimed one hundred thousand lives. A specific detail is alleged that Karadžić directed the massacre of several thousand Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
Mr. Karadžić Maintains he is innocent of these charges and is representing himself in the trial.
Deutsche Welle reports, “Under his command and oversight, Karadzic’s subordinates and those cooperating with them expelled, killed, tortured and otherwise mistreated hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats,” the prosecutors wrote in their “final trial brief.” The initial paper was submitted to the court in August, with a redacted version published on Friday.
“Should the Chamber find Karadzic responsible for a substantial portion of the crimes … life imprisonment is the only appropriate sentence,” they said. The prosecutors also dismissed most of Karadzic’s defense witnesses as “demonstrably lacking in credibility,” calling much of their testimony “confused, contradictory, vague, evasive and often plainly absurd.”
Additionally, Karadžić is accused of orchestrating the bombing and shelling of Sarajevo during a forty four month siege of the city leaving thousands dead.
Many individuals removed from the area of the former Yugoslavia have mostly a fading memory of the atrocities committed during the conflict during the 1990’s. In fact, the younger generations residing there have fortunately been spared the terrors their parents faced. Yet the past will be as cemented in the psyches of those who managed to survive. Some areas have many scars upon buildings, bridges and monuments to reinforce, remind, or educate those who travel by.
The trials of these actors, though long and often painful for those in witness, is certainly worth whatever length of time it requires. If anything it affords the world the opportunity to review events that happened. Events that might otherwise be buried and forgotten; as were far too many victims and their families.
By Darren Smith
Sources:
Deutsche Welle
United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
If ever there was a time to sharpen the axe & use it, it would be now. Just keeping him in prison until he dies equates his sentence to what many nonviolent criminals get in this Prison Nation. He might or might not prefer execution but it would send a better message & save money if done right. Execution for mass murder should be almost automatic. Meanwhile, empty 70% of our ridiculous prison population. Yeah, I’d like to see Netanyahu on trial too.
@aridog
Like you, I have a whole lot of books. I stole, uh, borrowed without returning most of them from my father, who still has a ton of them left. He even has a signed Kipling book! I remember him reading me The Grave of the Hundred Head(???) or something like that when I was little. And “the Dawn coming up like thunder (???).
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Reference my offer above…I am NOT asking for money for the books, but I would insist you prove your interest in the series, and why you think it is important.
PS: I owe “Iconoclast” a big “thank you” for reminding me, while I looked for a few of my books, that “Brother Enemy” was absent form my collection of books (I am a book nerd with about 2000+ shelved in our living, dinning, and office rooms) …now expanding in to a bedroom or two (mostly wildlife and survival tomes)…and the file cabinets full of older books in out basement and garage. Anyone want the “Encyclopedia of Music?”…I have a full set, sans one volume, (on voice of sopranos) again loaned out and never returned, to a person now long dead. Anyone want an early edition (with gold guilt page edges) of the complete works (2nd edition I think) of Rudyard Kipling? How about O. Henry? Mark Twain?
Come on, I am old and these books will never serve anyone else as well as they did me ever again. :-))
I grew up to age 11 without television, … books and radio were my outlets to the greater world in those days…I think they served me well.
BTW…if the person (a smart person, able to read English as well as native Viet or Khmer) I loaned my copy of “Brother Enemy” to is reading here, I would like it back.
I loaned it to you because you are Vietnamese and had not read much, or been taught much (hard to do in the middle of multiple wars) of the long history of the region…but you had suffered the consequences. Why did you never respond to the last conversation we had? I do, none-the-less hope you are well and your family too.
If not reading here, okay…I will buy another one ASAP.
iconoclast asked …
On another matter–who has a good book recommendation covering the Vietnam war?
Off hand I’d recommend books by both Bernard Fall and Jules Roy about French involvement on a large scale in Vietnam, post WWII. Another, perhaps my highest recommendation, is “Brother Enemy” by Nayan Chanda (sic?). If you were stimulated by the book “The Killing Fields” (and movie) …then “Brother Enemy” will fill in many of blanks. Others that might be illuminating are “Ho,” “A Bright Shining Lie,” “We Were Soldiers Once and Young…,” Col Nick Rowe’s (may he RIP after assassination in the Philippines) book about his POW experience, with a title something like “Five Years to Freedom” (he escaped a POW camp in the U-Minh Forest), and countless others if you Google “Vietnam-Non-Fiction” where you will also find history relating to the hostility issues in South East Asia long before either the French or the USA got involved, let alone a bunch of white guys in Geneva deciding what territory was “Vietnam.”
Actually, an honest history will go back to at least 1066, when the Tonkinese, who had subjugated the Annamese (Mountain folk south of North Vietnam…eg “Tonkin”), decided to attack “Cochin China” (the French term for the area around and south of Saigon) and take possession of the area from the Khmen (Cambodian) government. Coincidently simultaneous to the invasion of England by Normans in 1066 as well. It is no coincidence that the majority of the Delta Viets look more Cambodian (Khmer) than the Viets of the north, or the ethnic Chinese Viets of the coastal areas. When the, now united, Vietnamese invaded Pol Pot’s Cambodia it was the final act of the 1066 war. As a Vietnam veteran I even cheered the Commie army in attacking the Khmer jerks under Pol Pot…who far exceed the North Vietnamese descendants of the Viet Minh in brutality (more victims, not necessarily worse methods) , and that is saying something since the Northern Viets were brutal assassins of any group that disagreed with them.
If you really want an extensive list of non-fiction books on Vietnam and Indo-China, write to me at my email address (in my profile) and I will do the research, on line and from my own extensive library of such books, and give you a bona fide list of titles and authors, rather than my on the wing shots here. I was one of the fortunate few, upon enlistment in 1968, who had already read Bernard Fall’s “Street Without Joy” (La Rue Sans Joi) as well as dispatches of Jules Roy from Hanoi pre-1954. I knew what was coming because I was older (26) and had the time and collegiate experience discussing the matter at a time when the anit-war sentiments were volatile.
Start with “Brother Enemy” … a book that should be far wider read.
When do we get to see Netanyahu in the box?
The years long trial is less about justice and more about job security.
The “jurists” have a life long sinecure.
randyjet- we’ve had enough distance from those events that there should be a good book or two tracking what happened and sorting it out. (I, for one, find it hard to make sense of real time events when news reports carry partial stories..and many come with a bias. Not that I don’t try!) Any recommendations? From any reader here? On another matter–who has a good book recommendation covering the Vietnam war?
Icono, Unfortunately no books come to mind about the more recent history of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. Most of what I read came from news stories, and articles, and the internet. I have read extensively about Yugoslav history in WWII. My favorite author was a guy by the name of Milovan Djilas who was the number 2 man to Tito. He was a committed communist who actually thought they should practice what they preach. HIs first book was the New Class which was published in the West, but got him a stiff jail term in Yugoslavia. He later wrote about his experiences during WWII. He got my admiration for sheer political courage, when he complained to Stalin to his FACE in PUBLIC in the Soviet Union about the lawless behavior of the Red Army troops who came through Yugoslavia. I also visited Yugoslavia in 1984 and I learned that the Partisans had basically liberated themselves and the Red Army did not have much fighting to do. At the end as the Red Army came through, the Partisans had their own Navy, Air Force, and Army. They got their navy by hijacking German Kriegsmarine ships and using them. They equipped their Air Force the same way.
I remember that during the NATO assault, Milosevic offered NATO one hour of broadcast time if he could have a similar amount of time on the BBC and other western TV. Needless to say NATO turned him down and then bombed the Yugoslav broadcast facilities. That alone told me who was in the right.
Using the Obama criteria, Karadžić should get the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Nuremburg Trials are explained in part by one of the American Prosecutors who was present for part of the trials. His is Whitney Harris in his book called Tyranny On Trial. Nothing there took as long as this farce in Den Haag. The “dutch” are not trying this present schmuck in Den Haag. This is an international court.
beldar, I have not read that book and I will put it on my list. The Nurenburg Trials were under the auspices of the UN too by the way. The current trials are a farce with its selective prosecution. Izbegovich, the leader of Croatia, committed FAR worse war crimes than Milosevic, yet he was never indicted and aid kept on flowing to him and his killers. The same is true in Kosovo where the kids of the SS Brigade took control and committed worse horrors under the watchful eyes of NATO troops. Those folks are REAL Nazis who we were supporting. In the eyes of NATO and the UN it is OK to commit genocide against Serbs, That is why this court has no legal or moral legitimacy.
@randyjet: ” The only reason Germany did not get the dubious honor of being the first to experience nuclear weapons is that they collapsed before the bombs were ready.”
But they did get a little taste with the Dresden fire bombing and some others. I had thought that excluding radiation effects Dresden and Hiroshima were roughly comparable. But wiki (I know, I know) tells us that the casualties due to immediate effects at Dresden (maybe 25,000) were likely barely half those at Hiroshima (45,000 to 80,000 in the first day or so).
Just a reminder that atomic weapons are a whole order of magnitude more powerful.
Wookies are usually civil.
Trials which take longer than a week are suspect. Those which take over a month are travesties. Those that take years are: Horse itShay!
This other bench trial which makes the news every day for a year or so of the crying guy who killed the pretty girlfriend is one big joke.
What naivete is on display this morning. The victors conduct the war crime trials. That’s why it’s incumbent for the good guys to win. But, the US haters never think the US are the good guys. In their mind, we are always evil warmongers. We have a President w/ that mindset. Thankfully he’ll be gone soon. My fear is we do get a real war monger elected. The US has a distinct pattern of electing the opposite of the previous President.
“if the tribunal had brought those charges, the allies would have had some tall explaining to do”
That is an interesting issue that is not much talked about today. As a boy I remember some short remarks to the effect that allied bombing of cities was justified because WWII was total war and that workers were as much a part of the war machine as bullets and tanks – well that is sort of what I think I was told.
There are probably much better accounts to justified allied bombing than my sentence above. It might be interesting if someone could tell us a little more about how that generation understood and justified bombing population centers.
bfm, The short and real answer is that the Nazis and the Japanese did it first and so we returned the favor. I doubt that there is any Chinese person in the world who would denounce the use of the A bombs on Japan. The only reason Germany did not get the dubious honor of being the first to experience nuclear weapons is that they collapsed before the bombs were ready. The atomic scientists would have had NO compunction about using them on Nazis since so many of them had personal experience with them. I have not read that any of the scientists were happy at not using them on Germany. I think that they would have been very happy to drop it on Berlin even though the Soviets were nearby. The US would have been eager to tell the Soviets to pull back so that we could try out this latest weapon had it been available.
Netanyahu, cheney, Rumsfeld, Blair, and Obama are probably paying close attention. While they may think they are protected, the rest of the world may not feel that way.
Randy,
Even Nuremberg was not exactly free of hypocrisy. If you remember your history, Goering and other top Nazi war leaders were never charged with deliberate targeting of civilians. The bombings of London and Coventry, as well as use of the V-1 and V-2 weapons against civilian targets, were war crimes. However, if the tribunal had brought those charges, the allies would have had some tall explaining to do as to why Curtis LeMay and “Bomber” Harris were not indicted.
I suppose it was fortunate for General LeMay and Air Marshal Harris that there were enough Nazi war crimes to get convictions without adding those other charges.
OS That is why I have nothing but admiration for how the UN conducted the Nurenburg Trials. If the UN forces did the same thing, NO charges were brought against the defendants. A good example is the charge of unrestricted submarine warfare that was brought against Adm Doenitz. His lawyers got a letter from Adm Nimitz stating that the US had similar tactics in the Pacific and that he was guilty of the same thing. The Court dropped that charge against Doenitz. People also forget that in the first group tried, FOUR defendants were found not guilty and were released.
If the current hypocritical “court” were to adopt the same methods and charges of the Nurenburg court. Karadzic would not be on trial at all since the UN forces and our allies were guilty of exactly the SAME thing, and on a more massive scale. This so called court is nothing but victors vengeance and should never be compared to Nurenburg. It is a libelous comparison.
Darren, Thanks. I had forgotten about this reprobate. You are absolutely correct. Diligence and patience is required in matters such as this. Israel taught the world that in their searches for Nazi war criminals. That search should be ending soon.
While I have no doubt Karadzic is deserving of his fate, I have to note the rank hypocrisy of the court. There were little or no prosecutions of US or NATO officers for their war crimes which were numerous. The Croatians got a pass for the genocide of ethnic Serbs in the Krajina part of Croatia which resulted in a similar amount of deaths and expulsions. In fact, US officials endorsed the genocide. Then we cannot forget Gen Clark who thinks that journalists are legitimate targets of war when he bombed the radio and TV facilities in Belgrade because he did not like what they were saying about the NATO aggression and violations of the UN Charter, and the Helsinki Treaty.
Then I got a laugh out of the location of the court in Den Hague because the Dutch were guilty of genocide in their war to keep Indonesia as a colony. Of course the other members were just as guilty as the Dutch. I always thought that folks should come to court with clean hands, but with victors vengeance I guess not. At least the Nurenburg Trials were fairer and used better methods and law. The current court is a poor shadow of those trials.