Radovan Karadzic’s arrest & show trial

[TonyGosling]

"When asked if he was concerned about being arrested, he replied “No, I don't think about that at all. Anyone can be arrested. It is possible to arrest and kill anyone. It would be better for them to kill me than to let me go to the Hague. In the Hague, they would have far more problems with me...”"

Kangaroo court certainly... The only question here is will the Western media, political classes and public buy it?

Karadzic’s Arrest Puts the Lid on the FAKE War on Terror
22.07.2008 Source: Pravda.Ru



Corporate western media gleefully announced the arrest of Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic on Monday, thereby adding one more nail on the lid of their hypocrisy, duplicity and self serving arrogance. How these postulating, perverse, immoral demons of hell can stand themselves defies the sensibilities of anyone who truly stands for truth and justice, not the justice of the law of the jungle where the strong crush the weak, but true justice.

........................

The next war on terror, after terrorists in Afghanistan versus the Soviet Union, was in the former Yugoslavia where the same western funded Islamic extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, used terrorism to set up pro-western puppet states.

In a 1997 interview, Karadzic said, “I am perfectly peaceful. I am innocent. I believe in God.” When asked if he was concerned about being arrested, he replied “No, I don't think about that at all. Anyone can be arrested. It is possible to arrest and kill anyone. It would be better for them to kill me than to let me go to the Hague. In the Hague, they would have far more problems with me...”

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-07-2008/105849-karadzic -0

[TonyGosling]

Why this court is a criminal waste of time and money
By John Laughland
Last updated at 9:51 PM on 26th July 2008

When the former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic was arrested last week, it looked like the cause of international justice had scored yet another breathtaking victory. His trial, it seemed, would be a mere formality.

Yet if international justice is to be worthy of the name, it must behave according to the rules of judicial procedure. Unfortunately, those running international justice often play fast and loose with the rules.

Karadzic will be tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, one of three courts established by the United Nations Security Council for specific countries, the others being for Rwanda and Sierra Leone.



Together they have accumulated a list of practices that are completely illegal in British courts and in most civilised jurisdictions.

They frequently hold entire sessions, or parts of sessions, in secret, censoring the transcripts so that no one will ever know what was said in court.

They regularly allow witnesses to give evidence anonymously. This makes life easy for perjurers, which is why the House of Lords has just ruled it illegal for murder trials in Britain, and it makes it impossible for a defendant to cross-examine his accusers properly. [or to appeal a case - ed.]

Such denunciation in secret reminds us of the worst excesses of totalitarian regimes. But at the Yugoslav tribunal no fewer than 40 per cent of the prosecution witnesses are anonymous.

Anonymous witnesses are so common at the Rwanda tribunal that defence lawyers are now convinced that most of them are in fact a small band of paid liars, possibly trained by the new Rwandan government, who appear repeatedly in different trials to spin whatever yarn the prosecution wants.

Trials before international tribunals are grotesquely long. The man accused of being the ringleader of the genocide in Rwanda, Théoneste Bagosora, was arrested in 1996; the prosecution did not conclude its case until over ten years later, in June 2007, and the trial will continue for more years to come.

His case is typical but this is completely incompatible with the presumption of innocence.

If Karadzic goes to The Hague, the prosecutor there may not be able to produce direct proof that he ordered atrocities. He certainly never managed to do so in the trial of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, who died in his cell after five years of proceedings.

If that is the case, the prosecutor will fall back on a claim that Karadzic should have known or must have known about them, by virtue of his position as president.

But this doctrine of criminal liability, which tribunals already use to sentence people, is equivalent to a presumption of guilt. It means convicting a man for who he is, not for what he has done.

We can expect little better from the International Criminal Court, which is also based in The Hague.

Established in 2002 as a result of an international treaty for the purpose of prosecuting war crimes, it has recently decided that it has the right to prosecute anyone in the world, including heads of state of countries that have not agreed to submit to its jurisdiction.

On July 14 the ICC issued an indictment for genocide and war crimes against President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, even though Sudan does not recognise the court. The indictment of a sitting president was intended to show that no one was beyond the reach of international law.

We should all be worried if such power becomes a law unto itself but, unfortunately, it already has.

Supporters of international justice say they want an end to immunity for unscrupulous leaders. But the lawyers who work for these tribunals enjoy precisely the same immunity which they seek to deny to politicians – an unscrupulous prosecutor or judge cannot be prosecuted.

Just a week before he indicted President al-Bashir, the ICC prosecutor was caught cheating.

Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese military and political leader, was due to go on trial in June but judges discovered the prosecutor was withholding information, which the United Nations had given to him in secret, that exonerates Lubanga.

In other words, the prosecutor and the UN were conspiring to imprison a man on the basis of a lie. Lubanga’s release has been ordered but he remains in custody while the prosecutor appeals against the decision.

So instead of resigning or being punished, the prosecutor was allowed to carry on as if nothing had happened. He simply launched an even more high-profile indictment – that of al-Bashir.

And, of course, the ICC does not come cheap. The budget for 2008 was £71million and, although the court has been up and running since 2002, it has still not actually tried anyone.

This is an impressive waste of time and money, considering that more than 200 people are employed there.

Instead the court is now planning a vast new palace in which to house itself. And guess who pays for all this? That’s right – the taxpayers, especially those from richer states like Britain, which pays ten per cent of the budget.

We are used to hearing protests at the overweening power of international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and, of course, the European Union. These institutions are accused of arrogance, of having their own institutional agenda, or of being controlled behind the scenes by powerful states.

But when it comes to international criminal tribunals, by contrast, people assume that they must, by definition, be moral and objective.

Yet international tribunals can abuse their power just as easily as national ones. In fact, the likelihood of abuse is greater since international institutions are never elected: they are not controlled by any legislature and they take decisions without ever having to bear political responsibility for the consequences.

This is the very definition of unaccountable power.

As such, it is the antithesis of the justice which all defendants are entitled to expect, whatever the charges against them.

• A History Of Political Trials From Charles I To Saddam Hussein, by John Laughland, has just been published.


Find this story at www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1038863/Why-court-criminal- waste-time-money.html

[conspiracy analyst]

Whenever they 'catch' the 'most wanted' they almost always have a beard...
Maybe thats why Bin Laden can never be caught!

Once more the mass media of disinformation state to us they didn't know where Karadiszc was for so many years and they couldn't catch him. Now they did.

In the same week that BP was booted out of ...Russia.

[conspiracy analyst]

On the Srebrenica massacre and the genocide indictment...

http://globalresistance.com/analysis/falsely.htm

[TonyGosling]

Spooks pinched the mail so he can't appeal - a pathetic travesty of justice


International Court says sorry - no appeal - lost in the post.

Karadzic appeal not received by court

BELGRADE, Serbia (CNN) -- Court officials in Belgrade have not received an appeal preventing the extradition of former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.
Court officials said Monday they had checked on urgent mail at post offices around the country, and had no reason to expect an appeal preventing Karadzic's extradition to The Hague, where he will answer to war crimes charges before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).............

Extradition unites (nationalist=hardline) Serbs
Nationalist parties have called for a mass rally in Belgrade tomorrow against delivering any more Serbs to the United Nations tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Some of the former "democratic bloc" parties from the previous government also oppose extraditions of wanted Serbs.

[TonyGosling]

All pretence of balanced journalism goes out of the window in this Pravda piece.

Ziofascist corporate western media gleefully announced the arrest of Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic on Monday, thereby adding one more nail on the lid of their hypocrisy, duplicity and self serving arrogance.

How these postulating, perverse, immoral demons of hell can stand themselves defies the sensibilities of anyone who truly stands for truth and justice, not the justice of the law of the jungle where the strong crush the weak, but true justice.

http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/170342
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/105849-0/

Karadzic is accused of mass killings that the Hague war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history” and the worst in Europe since World War II. The claim that 8,000 "innocent" Muslims were "murdered" in Srebrenica is pathetically repeated despite considerable evidence to the contrary, that fighters were killed, including many Serbs, and the 8,000 number is so absurd one wonders how anyone could be gullible enough to accept it. But then again, wasn't it said that the bigger the lie, the easier it will be to sell?

"I was informed by our colleagues in Belgrade about the successful operation which resulted in the arrest of Radovan Karadzic," the tribunal's head prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said.

Karadzic was indicted on genocide charges in 1995 by the Hague tribunal, and topped its most-wanted list for more than a decade, allegedly resorting to elaborate disguises to elude authorities and shielded by countrymen who wished to keep the long arm of the kangaroo court off of their leaders. Karadzic loyalists have boasted that both he and Mladic were well guarded. "That is why this action will not succeed and Dr Karadzic will continue to be in safety, in the myth and legend of the Serb people," stated Kosta Cavoski, head of the International Committee for Truth on Radovan Karadzic. The Hague is only interested in persecuting Serbs since they are the ones who refused to kneel to the empire’s demands.

The next war on terror, after terrorists in Afghanistan versus the Soviet Union, was in the former Yugoslavia where the same western funded Islamic extremists, including Osama Bin Laden, used terrorism to set up pro-western puppet states.

In a 1997 interview, Karadzic said, “I am perfectly peaceful. I am innocent. I believe in God.” When asked if he was concerned about being arrested, he replied “No, I don't think about that at all. Anyone can be arrested. It is possible to arrest and kill anyone. It would be better for them to kill me than to let me go to the Hague. In the Hague, they would have far more problems with me...”

When speaking of the behavior of Serbian troops, Karadzic said, “As early as June 13 1992, I issued an order for strict observance of all international humanitarian norms..., from these documents you can see that I forbade all crimes, prosecuted and punished criminals. Most crimes were committed by the individuals who were seeking revenge.”



On Srebrenica Karadzic said, “Srebrenica has never been a safe zone. If you don't trust me, ask former UN Secretary General, Boutros Ghali. He admitted on several occasions that Srebrenica is a Muslim military stronghold and that Serb villages around Srebrenica had continuously been attacked from the enclave. During the last month of the existence of the enclave, every day at least one Serb died in Muslim attacks. All together, 1260 Serbs were killed. UN knows about that. The commander of Dutch peacekeeping troops in Srebrenica also knows that.”

“Nine thousand Muslim soldiers left the enclave and tried to break through our lines towards Tuzla. Three weeks later, they were still fighting around Srebrenica! Nine thousand soldiers is a lot of troops. They pushed towards their lines and our troops followed. They had to break through our fortified lines. The fighting was horrible. At one place 50 our soldiers were killed although they were in trenches. You can guess yourself how many Muslim soldiers died while attacking.”
“They finally managed to break through to Tuzla, but the fighting was horrible. Their officers simply sacrificed their soldiers. A proof is that we didn't manage to capture any higher and middle ranking officers. On the other hand, the soldiers attacked like ants…In any case, until the fall of the enclave on July 11, 1995, Srebrenica was a military base from which Muslims raided Serb villages, burned and slaughtered the population.”

Karadzic also said that Serb forces wished for the Muslim soldiers to surrender so that prisoner exchanges could take place. He went on to describe the events: “They now claim to have lost eight thousand people in Srebrenica. Every soldier who had disappeared during this one and previous actions is included in this number. They also included those who had died in 1992 and 1993. They put all these casualties on the list of disappeared in Srebrenica...Where are those mass graves about which they talk all the time? They haven't found them. They have used satellite photographs, investigated with special instruments and haven't found anything.”

Radovan Karadzic was born on 19 June 1945 in Petnijca, a village near Savnik in the mountains of Montenegro. In 1960, he moved to Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, where he studied medicine at the University of Sarajevo, graduating as a physician and psychiatrist. He also has published poetry and books for children.

Both Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic had a price on their head, with the US Government offering a $5 million reward for information leading to their arrest or conviction, the modern version of 30 pieces of silver.

Meanwhile these merchants of death, these butchers of Vietnam, these butchers of Yugoslavia, these butchers of Iraq and Afghanistan pose as holier-than-thou when they are the worst, most despicable, most blood stained war criminals the world has ever known. They pretend to fight a war against terrorism, while they aid and abet the most savage, brutal, blood thirsty terrorists.

So let the truth be told. Hopefully, Radovan Karadzic will make good on his promise: that the Hague will have far more problems with him. Once and for all, the international community needs to put an end to the persecution of the innocent for the greed of corporations, the theft of resources and the global hegemony of the empire.

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru

USA/CANADA

Speak your mind on Pravda.ru forum


Highly Educational Links on Yugoslavia and Balkans:

Boston Globe: First Mainstream American News Outlet to Admit Milosevic did
not "Start" Balkan Wars
http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=1208


The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention
http://www.monthlyreview.org/1007herman-peterson1.htm


Why is NATO in Yugoslavia? By Prof. Sean Gervasi
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/gervasi/why.htm


US/NATO Plans in support of Islamic Terrorists in the Balkans
by Z. Petrovic Pirocanac 2005 06 03
Colonel Pierre Henri Bunel, a French intelligence officer who worked in NATO HQs in Brussels,had informed the Serbs about the military targets NATO intended to bomb.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050203&a rticleId=406


German Intelligence and the CIA supported Al Qaeda sponsored Terrorists in Yugoslavia
2005 02 20
The report corroborates earlier analysis on the role of the BND and the CIA in supporting the KLA, several years prior as well as in the wake of the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia.
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050220&a rticleId=431




The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia... by Ziofascist always Blood Thirsty West
by Michael Parenti
Internet
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Parenti/RationalDestruc_Yugoslavia.h tml


- SREBRENICA – Code Word to Silence Critics of US Policy in the Balkans

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/jatras3.html

THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT -
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm

URL of the Srebrenica report is: http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/srebrenica.pdf

Pictorial:
http://compuserb.com/genoserb.htm
click above link to see what NATO pigs did to the Serbs

[TonyGosling]

So the law has already been broken by removing him from Belgrade after filching his appeal in the post.
These excesses are getting truly disgusting.


Radovan Karadzic arrived this morning at the UN detention centre in the The Hague and will appear in court for the first time tomorrow to face war crimes charges.

The former Bosnian Serb leader, who was arrested last week after 12 years on the run, was whisked out of Belgrade in the dead of night following a violent demonstration in Serbia's capital against his extradition.

Dr Karadzic, 63, left the fortified courthouse in Belgrade in a four-car convoy at 3.45am, flying overnight in a Serbian government jet to Rotterdam airport, from where he was transferred by helicopter to the compound for war crime defendants on the Dutch coast.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4427730.ece

[kbo234]

Amazing isn't it?

Karadzic goes missing for years and it turns out he was playing in a Dubliners' tribute band.

[isfahan]

Karadzic refuses to enter plea for war crimes
Russia Today, 29/08/08
http://www.russiatoday.com/news/news/29678

The former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, has refused to enter pleas to 11 charges, including genocide and crimes against humanity, as he appeared at his second court hearing in The Hague. Following the refusal, the tribunal judge submitted not guilty pleas on Karadzic's behalf.

Karadzic was Europe's most wanted man for more than a decade before his capture last month, but many Serbs still regard him as a defender of their nation and don't believe he will be given a fair trial.

A rally has been gathering in the centre of Belgrade every day since Karadzic’s arrest became known to the public. They have branded as traitors the Serb authorities who allowed the extradition.

“We are protesting against the current regime that extradited Radovan Karadzic to The Hague,” says Vladimir Djukanovic, a journalist and protester. “Many people support us but their views are ignored - so you don’t see them here. But if you ask, around 70 per cent would tell you they are opposed to this shameful extradition. The Hague Tribunal was created to punish only the Serbs.”

Karadzic was extradited to The Hague after being arrested in July, having spent 13 years on the run. He'd lived in Belgrade, disguised with a beard and long hair and working as an alternative healer.

He is charged with crimes against humanity and masterminding the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

His brother, Luka, says he could be found not guilty if people listened to the truth. He believes Karadzic shouldn’t be tried at all. RT caught up with Luka a day before his brother was due to appear in front of the Tribunal for the second time.

“I fear for his life,” he said. “He said himself he might die there. I want to remind you of the secret Karadzic-Holbrooke deal, the agreement with the man representing the U.S. in the Balkans at the time. Radovan was offered immunity if he disappeared after the war and he fulfilled his part - from 1998 he became totally anonymous. The Americans didn’t keep their promise. And the Americans often resolve their embarrassments by getting rid of problem people such as my brother.”

It's the tribunal's second highest profile case since former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was prosecuted. He died of a heart attack in his prison cell in March 2006, before his trial finished. And just like Milosevic, Karadzic has decided to represent himself in court.

General Bozidar Delic, now the Serbian National Assembly’s Deputy Speaker, spent 96 days in The Hague as a witness for Milosevic’s defence. He shared with RT his first-hand experience of the tribunal.

“It wasn’t just Milosevic who died in The Hague - his case is just the most obvious one,” he said. “I was there and my conclusion is that it's a political court which does not judge a person, but a whole nation. It is the only system in the world where the rules are constantly changing depending on who the defendant is.”

Vladimir Krshljanin, a former foreign relations advisor to Milosevic, agrees.

He said: “This is a killing machine - about a dozen Serbs have already died at The Tribunal, including President Milosevic himself. He was murdered - he was denied medical treatment when he needed urgent medical assistance. So anyone who is a Serb and gets there must be afraid for his life. And especially in Karadzic's case, with the whole controversy over the Holbrooke deal and the U.S. Administration. It is disgusting talking about that Tribunal and its behaviour. It should be cut, abolished as soon as possible - it’s a shame for the whole world.”

The extradition of Radovan Karadzic was one of the conditions for Serbia to get closer to EU membership. But many in Serbia still think that their country has nothing to gain from the move and that this trial is about to become yet another humiliation for their nation.

[TonyGosling]

International Injustice: the Conviction of Radovan Karadzic
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/30/international-injustice-the-con viction-of-radovan-karadzic/
By Diana Johnstone
Global Research, March 31, 2016
http://www.globalresearch.ca/international-injustice-the-conviction-of -radovan-karadzic/5517704

Radovan Karadzic
Last Thursday, news reports were largely devoted to the March 22 Brussels terror bombings and the US primary campaigns. And so little attention was paid to the verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for (former) Yugoslavia (ICTY) finding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic guilty of every crime it could come up with, including “genocide”. It was a “ho-hum” bit of news. Karadzic had already been convicted by the media of every possible crime, and nobody ever imagined that he would be declared innocent by the single-issue court set up in The Hague essentially to judge the Serb side in the 1990s civil wars that tore apart the once independent country of Yugoslavia.

Although it bears the UN stamp of approval, thanks to the influence of the Western powers, ICTY is essentially a NATO tribunal, with proceedings in English according to a jurisprudence invented as it goes along. Its international judges are vetted by Washington officials. The presiding judge in the Karadzic case was a South Korean, O-Gon Kwon, selected surely less for his grasp of ethnic subtleties in the Balkans than for the fact that he holds a degree from Harvard Law School. Of the other two judges on the panel, one was British and the other was a retired judge from Trinidad and Tobago.

As is the habit with the ICTY, the non-jury trial dragged on for years – seven and a half years to be precise. Horror stories heavily laced with hearsay, denials, more or less far fetched interpretations end up “drowning the fish” as the saying goes. A proper trial would narrow the charges to facts which can clearly be proved or not proved, but these sprawling proceedings defy any notion of relevance. Nobody who has not devoted a lifetime to following these proceedings can tell what real evidence supports the final judgment. The media stayed away from the marathon, and only showed up to report the inevitable “guilty” verdict condemning the bad guy. The verdict reads a bit like, “they said, he said, and we believe them not him.”

There was a civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from April 1992 to December 1995. Wars are terrible things, civil wars especially. Let us agree with David Swanson that “War is a crime”. But this was a civil war, with three armed parties to the conflict, plus outside interference. The “crime” was not one-sided.

Muslim False Flags

The most amazing passage in the rambling verdict by Judge O-Gon Kwan consists of these throw-away lines:

“With respect to the Accused’s argument that the Bosnian Muslim side targeted its own civilians, the Chamber accepts that the Bosnian Muslim side was intent on provoking the international community to act on its behalf and, as a result, at times, engaged in targeting UN personnel in the city or opening fire on territory under its control in order to lay blame on the Bosnian Serbs.”

This is quite extraordinary. The ICTY judges are actually acknowledging that the Bosnian Muslim siJohnstone-Queen-Cover-ak800--291x450de engaged in “false flag” operations, not only targeting UN personnel but actually “opening fire on territory under its control”. Except that that should read, “opening fire on civilians under its control”. UN peace keeping officers have insisted for years that the notorious Sarajevo “marketplace massacres”, which were blamed on the Serbs and used to gain condemnation of the Serbs in the United Nations, were actually carried out by the Muslim side in order to gain international support.

This is extremely treacherous behavior. The Muslim side was, as stated, “intent on provoking the international community to act on its behalf”, and it succeeded! The ICTY is living proof of that success: a tribunal set up to punish Serbs. But there has been no move to expose and put on trial Muslim leaders responsible for their false flag operations.

The Judge quickly brushed this off: “However, the evidence indicates that the occasions on which this happened pale in significance when compared to the evidence relating to [Bosnian Serb] fire on the city” (Sarajevo).

How can such deceitful attacks “pale in significance” when they cast doubt precisely on the extent of Bosnian Serb “fire on the city”?

The “Joint Criminal Enterprise” Label

ICTY’s main judicial trick is to have imported from US criminal justice the concept of a “Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE)”, used originally as a means to indict gangsters. The trick is to identify the side we are against as a JCE, which makes it possible to accuse anyone on that side of being a member of the JCE. The JCE institutionalizes guilt by association. Note that in Yugoslavia, there was never any law against Joint Criminal Enterprises, and so the application is purely retroactive.

Bosnia-Herzegovina was a state (called “republic”) within Yugoslavia based on joint rule by three official peoples: Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Any major decision was supposed to have the consent of all three. After Slovenia and Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia, the Muslims and Croats of Bosnia voted to secede from Yugoslavia, but this was opposed by Bosnian Serbs who claimed it was unconstitutional. The European Union devised a compromise that would allow each of the three people self-rule in its own territory. However, the Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, was encouraged by the United States to renege on the compromise deal, in the hope that Muslims, as the largest group, could control the whole territory. War thus broke out in April 1992.

Now, if you asked the Bosnian Serbs what their war aims were, they would answer that they wanted to preserve the independence of Serb territory within Bosnia rather than become a minority in a State ruled by the Muslim majority. Psychiatrist Radovan Karadzic was the elected President of the Bosnian Serb territory, “Republika Srpska”. However, according to ICTY the objective of the Serbian mini-republic was to “permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Serb-claimed territory … through the crimes charged”, described as the “Overarching Joint Criminal Enterprise”, leading to several subsidiary JCEs. Certainly, such expulsions took place, but they were rather the means to the end of securing the Bosnian Serb State rather than its overarching objective. The problem here is not that such crimes did not take place – they did – but that they were part of an “overarching civil war” with crimes committed by the forces of all three sides.

If anything is a “joint criminal enterprise”, I should think that plotting and carrying out false flag operations should qualify. ICTY does not seem interested in that. The Muslims are the good guys, even though some of the Muslim fighters were quite ruthless foreign Islamists, with ties to Osama bin Laden.

One of the subsidiary JCEs attributed to Karadzic was the fact that between late May and mid-June of 1995, Bosnian Serb troops fended off threatened NATO air strikes by taking some 200 UN peacekeepers and military observers hostage. It is hard to see why this temporary defensive move, which caused no physical harm, is more of a “Joint Criminal Enterprise” than the fact of having “targeted UN personnel”, as the Muslim side did.

The final JCE in the Karadzic verdict was of course the July 1995 massacre of prisoners by Bosnian forces after capturing the town of Srebrenica. That is basis of conviction for “genocide”. The Karadzic conviction rests essentially on two other ICTY trials: the currently ongoing ICTY trial of Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic, who led the capture of Srebrenica, and the twelve-year-old judgment in the trial of Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic.

The Karadzic verdict pretty much summarizes the case against General Mladic, leaving little doubt where that trial is heading. Karadzic was a political, not a military leader, who persistently claims that he neither ordered nor approved the massacres and indeed knew nothing about them. Many well informed Western and Muslim witnesses testify to the fact that the Serb takeover was the unexpected result of finding the town undefended. This makes the claim that this was a well planned crime highly doubtful. The conclusion that Karadzic was aware of what was happening is inferred from telephone calls. In the final stages of the war, it seems unlikely that the Bosnian Serb political leader would compromise his cause by calling on his troops to massacre prisoners. One can only speculate as to what “a jury of peers” would have concluded. ICTY’s constant bias (it refused to investigate NATO bombing of civilian targets in Serbia in 1999, and acquitted notorious anti-Serb Bosnian and Kosovo Albanian killers) drastically reduces its credibility.

What exactly happened around Srebrenica in 1995 remains disputed. But the major remaining controversy does not concern the numbers of victims or who is responsible. The major remaining controversy is whether or not Srebrenica truly qualifies as “genocide”. That claim owes its legal basis solely to the 2004 ICTY judgment in the Krstic case, subsequently echoed (but never investigated) by the International Court of Justice.

“Procreative Implications”

That judgment was very strange. The conclusion of “genocide” depended solely on the “expert” opinion of a sociologist. It was echoed again in the Karadzic case. ICTY reiterated its earlier judgment that the “killings demonstrate a clear intent to kill every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica. Noting that killing every able-bodied male of a group results in severe procreative implications that may lead to the group’s extinction, the Chamber finds that the only reasonable inference is that members of the Bosnian Serb Forces orchestrating this operation intended to destroy the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica as such.”

In other words, even though women and children were spared, Srebrenica was a unique genocide, due to the “severe procreative implications” of a lack of men. The ICTY concluded that “the members of the Srebrenica JCE… intended to kill all the able-bodied Bosnian Muslim males, which intent in the circumstances is tantamount to the intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.” Thus genocide in one small town.

This judgment is widely accepted without being critically examined. Since wars have traditionally involved deliberately killing men on the enemy side, with this definition, “genocide” comes close to being synonymous with war.

In fact, not all Srebrenica men were massacred; some have lived to be witnesses blaming the Bosnian Muslim leadership for luring the Serbs into a moral trap. Moreover, there were many Muslim soldiers temporarily stationed in Srebrenica who were not natives of the town, and thus their tragic fate had nothing to do with destroying the future of the town.

Never mind. ICTY did its job. Karadzic, aged 70, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. As if to make a point, the verdict was announced on the 17th anniversary of the start of NATO bombing of what was left of Yugoslavia, in order to detach Kosovo from Serbia. Just a reminder that it’s not enough for the Serbs to lose the war, they must be criminalized as well.

The verdict is political and its effects are political. First of all, it helps dim the prospects of future peace and reconciliation in the Balkans. Serbs readily admit that war crimes were committed when Bosnian Serb forces killed prisoners in Srebrenica. If Muslims had to face the fact that crimes were also committed by men fighting on their side, this could be a basis for the two peoples to deplore the past and seek a better future together. As it is, the Muslims are encouraged to see themselves as pure victims, while the Serbs feel resentment at the constant double standards. Muslim groups constantly stress that no verdict can possibly assuage their suffering – an attitude that actually feeds international anti-Western sentiment among Muslims, even though the immediate result is to maintain the Yugoslav successor states as mutually hostile satellites of NATO.

The other political result is to remind the world that if you get into a fight with the United States and NATO, you will not only lose, but will be treated as a common criminal. The US-led NATO war machine is always innocent, its adversaries are always guilty. The Roman Empire led the leaders it defeated into slavery. The United States Empire puts them in jail.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her new book is Queen of Chaos: the Misadventures of Hillary Clinton. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr

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Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic brands Hague’s toughened sentence as ‘futile revenge’
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World March 21, 14:06 UTC+3
The former leader of the Bosnian Serbs stressed that the Serbian people won, which resulted in the creation of their own republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina
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Radovan Karadzic
Radovan Karadzic© AP Photo/Peter Dejong, Pool
BELGRADE, March 21./TASS/. Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has labelled The Hague tribunal’s decision as "futile revenge" to increase his sentence to life imprisonment over his participation in the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992-1995.
"This is futile revenge by The Hague tribunal against me, an old man, who cannot do anything. We did not give up in tougher times and we won’t give up now, I will never stop fighting for the truth about our just cause in the war, which had been imposed on us and where all three nations (Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims) suffered. In any war, especially a civil one, crimes were committed, which our country condemned and investigated if it knew about them. That’s why at anytime and anywhere we will preserve our dignity, we won’t hate others and will proudly keep what is above all of us, Republika Srpska," Karadzic said in his address to the Serbs, which was read out loud by one of his lawyers Marco Sladojevic.
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Radovan Karadzic
Hague court toughens sentence against ex-Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic to life imprisonment
The former Bosnian Serb leader highlighted that against all the odds, the Serbs won a victory, meaning the creation of their own republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "The Serbs and I, together we were victorious: Republika Srpska was established and the Serbian people are free in their own country. The sacrifice that I make is smaller than many others - many thousands of young men built Republika Srpska sacrificing their own lives and many of them are disabled veterans. The greatest sacrifice was made by the mothers, whose sons, often the only children in the family, gave their lives for the freedom of the Serbs. This is a genuine sacrifice," Karadzic stressed.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals on Wednesday increased the sentence for Karadzic, 73, from 40 years behind bars to life imprisonment. Karadzic, who had absconded from justice for 13 years, was arrested by Serbia’s intelligence services in the suburbs of Belgrade in July 2008. The trial started in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on October 26, 2009. In March 2016, Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison on 10 of 11 criminal counts, including the Srebrenica massacre.
In April 2018, appeal hearings on Karadzic’s case were held in The Hague, during which the prosecutors demanded that the Bosnian Serb leader be sentenced to life imprisonment, while the defense team asked the judges to review the case or acquit the politician.
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