How International Justice Is Being Gutted

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/how-international-justice-is-being-gutted/277767/


Former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic appears in court at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, June 3, 2011. (Reuters)

Over the last eight months, a series of surprise rulings at the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has sparked extraordinary controversy in the staid world of international law.

Critics say the decisions weakened World War II-era precedents that hold commanders responsible for war crimes. Supporters say their impact is being exaggerated and the judge associated with them is being unfairly maligned.

In interviews, two former tribunal officials said the decisions reversed years of progress in the field and endangered the recent war crimes convictions of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. They said they feared that the United States and Israel pressured judges to reverse precedents that could limit both countries' counter-terrorism operations.

"We are taking steps back," said one of the former officials.

The epicenter of the controversy - and a mystery - is Judge Theodor Meron, the 83-year-old president of the U.N. tribunal. A holocaust survivor, Meron has worked for decades to create international war crimes tribunals.

[truebluegreen]

1. This is terrible but not a surprise.

The US has worked to undermine "international justice" for years--Dog Forbid it should ever apply to us or anything we do, or our friends do.

Read an article just this morning: former president Sanchez of Bolivia--"a free-marketer and US ally"--is in the US, and the government has refused to extradite him to face charges for the killing of 64 people at political protests (numerous people have already been convicted on related charges; Human Rights Watch called the convictions a "notable advance&quot .

Par for the course for the US but the more sunshine the better.

[Catherina]

2. Paving the way to protect our own war criminals

Related. Posted by Karmadillo a few weeks ago

http://www.williampfaff.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=632

Paris, June 19, 2013 – The irresistible impulse to aggrandize power which has been evident in American foreign policy since (at least) the fall of the East-West bipolar system in 1991, was recently demonstrated by the NSA revelations of Edward Snowden. Now there is a new manifestation of apparent illicit power assertion revealed by a devastating front-page report in the International Herald Tribune on June 15.

Marlise Simons of The New York Times, for many years the paper’s indefatigable specialist on the Hague international courts, revealed that the Danish member of the UN war crimes tribunal has made a “blistering” protest against pressures exercised by the United States to bring about acquittals of several top Croat and Serb commanders accused of responsibility for war crimes atrocities during the Yugoslav succession wars of 1991-95.

These acquittals were justified by the court with a verdict that the accused had not specifically ordered or approved war crimes committed by subordinates. Among those acquitted were two Croat wartime generals, the Serbian army chief of staff, and the chief and deputy chief of the Serbian secret police.

This was a departure from the principle established in previous war crimes trials that commanders were implicated in their subordinates’ crimes as they had all been part of “joint criminal enterprises.” It also seemed an abandonment of the principle asserted – with the specific support, even insistence, of American authorities at the time -- at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II, declaring the personal responsibility of Nazi political and military officials for the crimes committed by Germany.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/23-5

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Recent acquittals of several top Croat and Serb commanders charged with atrocities committed by their players in the Yugoslav wars of 1991-95 is causing a ruckus in Europe. Why? Because judges on the tribunal say Team Obama brought pressure, forcing the not-guilty decisions, which contradict the U.S. stance at the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Marlise Simons, of the NY Times, broke the story in the International Herald Tribune. Her Trib colleague Willam Pfaff sees the significance of what happened this way:

It reflects the long-standing American (and Israeli) concern that their officers or government figures might one day find themselves before the court on charges of breaking international law or as bearing responsibility for war crimes…Most democracies are seen as threatening to these American and Israeli stands…They are the states which (can) challenge these efforts to destroy the established norms of international conduct, as proclaimed by the Nuremberg Tribunal – which amounts to an effort to abolish one of the principal moral achievements of the second world war.”

[xchrom]

3. +1

[librechik]

6. yup--could hardly be more clear. n/t

[Igel]

4. Or right-sized.

There's always a thirst for revenge. IF somebody's wronged somebody must be guilty. It's really hard when that person's dead or so low-ranking that it seems hardly worth it.

The next thing is to go up the chain of command. Nurnberg ditched the "I was told to do it" defense. Now there's a move to ditch the "I didn't know it happened under my command defense." Because everybody in charge knows everything that happens under his/her watch.

We rather think that sometimes. You call look back at all kinds of things under Reagan and the Bushes where they said, "Gee, didn't know." Welll, of course they had to know. They're in command, right, they're in charge? What kind of a lame defense is that? That's what (R) do to protect those evil people. Have they no shame?

But sometimes we don't think that. When the Fast and Furious "scandalito" broke the immediate conservative response was to blame Obama. Same with Beghazi, for good or bad. He's in charge. The buck stops with him. "Not so fast," Obama's quite unnecessary defenders said. "He can't know everything that happens under him." At some point there was a rogue bureaucrat, somebody other than Obama who signed off on it because, well, Obama obviously can't do *everything*.

Where we think that way and when we think that way is instructive. It's a way of helping attack those we don't like and defend those we support. The simple fact that the attributed guilt or innocence is predictable by party affiliation of the president and the attackers makes it obvious that it's not just a legal argument, it's a political argument rooted in bias.

The Serb reaction when some Croatian and Muslim commanders got off--to scant notice in the West, perhaps a small blip buried in the news--was one of shock and amazement. They were commanders--how could they *not* know what was going on? The Croatian or Muslim reaction was one of, "Well, of course--how could they know everything?"

Given the incredible bias, all that's left is a process to produce equitable laws concerning evidence and guilt and then a mechanism to ensure that there's a mechanism for enforcing the application of a fairly close reading of those laws in a way that anybody would have to produce the same verdict. Since "verdict" is relativized to person and belief, the process has to make person and belief as irrelevant as possible.

What case am I writing about again?

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. USA and Israel - 2 countries not in the ICC, but with influence over the Yugoslavian precedents

From later in the article: "My guess is that the tribunal was trying to narrow the concept of aiding and abetting," Roth said, "to avoid far right fears in the United States that U.S. military aid would lead to criminal liability if the recipients unexpectedly committed war crimes."

The US far right should be told to go screw itself.