The death of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic last Saturday, apparently caused by a heart attack, marks the end of an arduous and groundbreaking era for international criminal law and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
My colleagues at the ICTY used to say that there were three categories of criminals that emerged from the Balkan wars and subsequent ethnic cleansing. The first group consisted of individuals who were violent criminals before the war and were simply given license by the Serbian government to continue their habitual practice of rape, murder and torture. Among such individuals is Zeljko Raznatovic, more commonly know as Arkan, who commanded Serbian paramilitary groups responsible for some of the most heinous atrocities committed during the wars.
The second group was made up of individuals who truly believed in the supremacy of the Serbian race and culture and felt that ethnically cleansing the Balkans of individuals of Albanian and Bosnian decent was their God-given mandate. During my time at the Tribunal, I worked on the case of one such individual, Vidjisalv Seselj, who complained that our Croatian interpreters were corrupting the Serbian language and often thumped the Serbian equivalent of Hitler's Mein Kampf during court sessions.
The final class was composed of individuals regarded as political opportunists and de facto war profiteers. These individuals were not truly racists or warmongers, but they saw violence and polarizing anti-Albanian and Bosnian rhetoric as a means of wielding political power over Serbia and its neighboring states. Milosevic falls into this category.
Milosevic's May 22, 1999 indictment charged him with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war for ordering mass murders, deportations, and persecutions. As Milosevic himself did not directly carry out these actions, he was charged under an international legal convention known as "command responsibility."
My role on the Milosevic trial was surprisingly to assist in uncovering evidence that might exculpate the accused from the charges being levied by the office of the Prosecution.
I was tasked with uncovering relevant data contained in binders of military intelligence reports, NGO observer statements, and witness accounts that might show that Milosevic was unaware of crimes being carried out by his military commanders, or that he was being lied to about what was going on in Kosovo and other areas where Serbs conducted ethnic cleansing.
Looking back on my experience in The Hague, I came away less then enamored with the international judicial system as it currently exists. Though one must allow for growing pains in an ever developing field like international law - one whose rules and precedents are being established and revised on a daily basis - I could not help but remark at the utter inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the Tribunal.
A typical trial would go as follows: Teams consisting of dozens of prosecutors, criminologists, investigators, and staffers would spend years and millions of United Nations dollars piecing together an indictment against a Bosnian or Serbian military leader responsible for ordering or overseeing the deaths and torture of numerous individuals. After a lengthy trial, the individual in question would ultimately be convicted of five to ten crimes against humanity which, somehow, only warranted a ten-year prison sentence (even in Milosevic's case, capital punishment was ruled out nearly immediately after the trial began). The individual was then allowed to choose the country in which they would be incarcerated. The most popular destination was Sweden, where I assume the Serb or Bosnian leader would be able to maintain a higher quality of life then back at home. Upon returning to their place of origin, the ex-prisoners were welcomed as national heroes who stood up for their nation's beliefs on the world's greatest stage and persevered. Many of these individuals were then immediately elected to public office.
On the flip side, there is a body of research which suggests that these trials do not actually "serve justice" in the eyes of the victims. Eric Stover, director of the Human Rights Center at University of California Berkeley, interviewed 87 victims and witnesses who had testified before the ICTY for his recently-published book titled "The Witnesses". Many of the victims stated that they did not feel that testifying before the Tribunal, or seeing their assailants on the stand, did anything to assuage the pain they had endured, or provide them with a sense of closure. Quite conversely, many of those who chose to travel to The Hague to testify claimed that they ended up worse off then before. Many were physically threatened; others lost their jobs and faced social isolation following their return home.
Despite this evidence and my experience, I still hold a firm belief in the necessity of such international legal institutions to deter would-be criminals from carrying out further atrocities. The work being done by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, ICTY satellite courts in Bosnia, and the International Criminal Court are vital to ensuring that those who commit egregious crimes against humanity are held accountable for their actions and are, at the very least, forced to stare into the faces of the victims and family members whom they so
hideously wronged.
Many will suggest that the Milosevic trial ended in failure, because the accused perished before he could truly suffer a punishment befitting his crimes. I contend that Milosevic's death does not undo the significance of his trial.
His trial established a firm precedent that even the most senior politicians will be held accountable for the crimes committed during their leadership - a principle now being upheld in the Saddam Hussein trial. Furthermore, as international law is an ever-evolving field, every convention and precedent gained from Milosevic's case serves as a building block for legislation that can be used to try future assailants and their political leaders. Finally, the prosecution was able to complete its case against Milosevic before he passed away. In this sense, his crimes, and those of his co-conspirators, now form part of the public record which will live on to educate future generations of the dangers of ethnocentrism and racially-infused political ideology.
Ben Harburg is a senior majoring in international relations. He worked as an intern in the Office of the Prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague during the summer of 2003.
