If Americans had any interest
in what the future of jurisprudence — and justice — looks like, they
would tune in to the Hague’s International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia, where Orwell’s world has been a reality for the past
17 years. The ICTY is the body that was set up to try cases whose
supposed weightiness was compared to “Nuremberg II.” But so ignored by
the public and media alike have the proceedings been, that no one even
notices the perversion of jurisprudence and evisceration of justice
that have been taking place there.
In a follow-up to the witness intimidation and other prosecutorial
misconduct that the Hague itself has been compelled to investigate — that is, to give its best impression of investigating
— we have a few updates, including a recent item from Andy Wilcoxson
exposing perhaps one of the more blatant corruptions of the Hague.
Balkans: Prosecutors try to stop intimidation probe
The Hague, 21 Oct. (AKI) - The prosecutors of the United Nations war
crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday appealed
a court decision to launch an investigation into claims that they
pressured, intimidated and tried to bribe witnesses.
Several prosecution witnesses in the trial of Serbian nationalist
leader Vojislav Seselj, accused of crimes against Muslims and Croats
during the 1991-1995 war that followed the disintegration of the former
Yugoslavia, told the court they were pressured, intimidated and even
offered bribes.
The presiding judge in Seselj’s trial, Jean Claude Antonetti has
ordered the tribunal Secretariat to name “amicus curiae”, whose identity
will remain confidential, to investigate the claims.
In their appeal, the prosecutors said on Wednesday that the court paid
unnecessary attention to “false and unbelievable accusations of
people, many of who are closely connected to the political party of the
indictee”.
Seselj, the leader of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party (SRS),
has been charged with crimes allegedly committed by paramilitaries
recruited by SRS, but he himself never carried arms.
Seselj voluntarily surrendered to the tribunal in February 2003 and
denied the charges. He claims he was tried for “verbal offence” because
the prosecutors had no other arguments in the case.
The prosecutors asked the appeals panel to annul the decision to
carry out an investigation, saying witnesses’ claims were “unbelievable
and contradictory”.
So here’s just a sampling of the kinds of shenanigans the
prosecutors would like dismissed — and no wonder. It of course applies
to a different trial — the shocking experiences of a witness in the
Karadzic case — and that’s what underscores just how pervasive the
Hague’s crimes are:
Karadzic Trial Witness Alleges Extreme Prosecutorial Misconduct (Oct. 18)
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
Hearing Date: June 30, 2010
On June 30th…the testimony of former Bosnian-Serb justice minister
Momcilo Mandic began…Mandic began by telling the court that he would
rather testify as a witness for the Chamber, than a witness for the
Prosecution.
Mandic explained that the Prosecutor “threatened me, the associates of Mr. Tieger, they told me that if I didn’t come in to testify, I would be incarcerated.”
Mandic was also persecuted by the NATO puppet regime in Belgrade. He
said, “In 2003 I was suspected of aiding and abetting and hiding Dr.
Karadzic. I spent five months because of that in a solitary confinement
cell in Belgrade, and none of my family members could visit me. And The
Hague investigators came to see me. The Prosecutor’s investigator,
that is, were allowed to come and see me.”
He said, “I was told that if I failed to co-operate and
failed to tell them where Dr. Karadzic was, that I would be an accused
before this Court and that I would be accused and found guilty by a
Serbian Court.”
Mandic told the Tribunal that “My two sons were held in
custody. And John Ruttel, one of the [OTP-Office of the Prosecutor]
investigators, said to my son that he would be released if I were to
come to Sarajevo.”
After the Serbian police
released him, Mandic said, “I was kidnapped, as a citizen of
Montenegro, and transferred in the space of two hours to a prison in
Sarajevo, without any extradition proceedings or anything else.
And in the prison there and in the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the
evening hours I was taken out and was interrogated by the operatives
and investigators of The Hague Tribunal, or, rather, the OTP. He said,
“they asked me, once again, about Dr. Karadzic.”
Mandic said, “I wasn’t able to assist the OTP by telling them
anything, because from 1996 I have had nothing to do with Dr. Karadzic. I
wasn’t in contact with him at all. I tried to present my arguments and
to explain this to them, but they just didn’t want to listen.”
He told the court that “The [Hague] investigators told me that I
would be taken to court in Bosnia-Herzegovina and that the prosecutor of
the BH Court would raise an indictment against me, and that I would be
sentenced to a prison term of eight years. When I said that they had
no grounds for filing a lawsuit against me, they said that they would find grounds and that that wasn’t important.”
Sure enough, Mandic told the Tribunal that “everything those
operatives told me would happen did happen. I was prosecuted because of
the commercial bank in Srpsko Sarajevo, which is owned by me, that I provided credits and loans
to firms and companies which assisted Dr. Karadzic. And I was found
guilty and given a prison term of eight years. I served five years.”
He was ultimately released from prison when Karadzic was
captured and it was obvious that Mandic hadn’t been harboring him.
Mandic said, “It was established that I was found guilty of a crime that
didn’t exist and that it was all bureaucracy and false testimony on
the part of false witnesses. And as an American citizen who
had immunity, this person [who perjured herself with her testimony
against Mandic] went to Dallas, Texas, and she even took some money from my bank.
[The woman in question is named Toby Robinson, who in 2006 was
appointed by the UN High Representative in Bosnia to liquidate Mandic’s
bank. Interestingly, notes Wilcoxson, she got the job after her predecessor was beaten up and resigned.]
“I was helpless, faced with a situation of that kind. And Dr.
Karadzic has been in a Scheveningen prison for two or three years. I had
no contact with him whatsoever, but I remain somebody who was
prosecuted and found guilty and held in prison for seven or eight years,
and my family suffered. And now, as such, I am supposed to come here
and be here as a Prosecution witness, whereas the Prosecution thought
that I was harboring him and assisting him. I think that that is not
commensurate with man’s dignity, and I would like to request that the
Trial Chamber allow me to be a Court witness.”
The most damning thing for the Karadzic trial is the fact that after
the witness had said these things; the Presiding judge absolutely did
not care.
Judge Kwon reacted to Mandic’s statement saying, “Mr. Mandic, you
raised several issues, but I will address only those which relate to the
Tribunal’s business; i.e., your
testimony.” And then he asked the defense and the prosecution “what
position they take in relation to allow the witness to give evidence as
a Chamber witness.”
Judge Kwon did not care in the least that the witness had been
blackmailed and falsely imprisoned because of the Prosecutor, or that
his family was subjected [to] false arrest and persecution. All the
judge cared about was whether the witness should testify as a Chamber
witness or a Prosecution witness – ultimately Mandic was allowed to
testify as a Chamber witness, but who cares?
When prosecutorial misconduct of this magnitude is alleged,
it at least deserves an investigation. The trial should stop, it should
be ascertained what happened to the witness, what role the Office of
the Prosecutor played, and whether any other witnesses are being
subjected to the same kind of mistreatment.
The fact that the presiding judge deliberately ignored these
allegations calls the fairness of the entire trial into question. If
the prosecutor is resorting to blackmail and false imprisonment in order
to get what he wants, then the entire trial process can’t be trusted
and the verdict is without any legitimacy.
The Prosecutor’s behavior is scandalous, and the Presiding
Judge’s decision to turn a blind eye to it proves beyond any shadow of
doubt that the judicial process has been corrupted and the trial is
rigged.
…A complete transcript of this hearing is available at: http://ictytranscripts.dyndns.org/trials/karadzic/100630ED.htm and http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/trans/en/100630ED.htm
As Wilcoxson subsequently pointed out:
The prosecutors kidnapped him, falsely imprisoned him, and threatened his family — but the judges in the trial DO NOT CARE. The
people putting Karadzic on trial are thugs and criminals. If Karadzic
were the one sending people out to kidnap and threaten witnesses and
their families you can bet it would be front-page news — but since the
Prosecutor did it the media and the judges ignore it like it doesn’t
matter – at a minimum it affects the credibility of the prosecution’s case and the fairness of the trial.
In a relevant article by Benjamin Schett in September for the
Canada-based Global Research site, we go back to the Seselj trial — the
one in which the Court has taken the uncharacteristic step of ordering
an investigation into the pervasive prosecutorial misconduct — but
again, only in the Seselj case.
The Criminalization of Justice at The Hague (Sept. 7)
…The fact that the ad hoc tribunal of The Hague deems it necessary
to take this case into consideration in one way or another is in itself
remarkable. After all, the tribunal’s manner of conduct cannot be
called impartial: the methods The Hague employs to reach their desired
convictions range from the denial of the right to self defence, to
silencing the microphone when the accused speaks out on facts that are
embarrassing to the prosecution or, as already mentioned, the
intimidation of witnesses. Such occurrences happened often enough during
the Milosevic trial[3], as when the former head of the Serbian secret
service, Radomir Markovic, testified as a witness of the prosecution
that he had been pressured in Belgrade to wrongly accuse Milosevic of
having ordered war crimes.[4] For this he was offered a new identity
abroad, but after these revelations, Markovic was sent back to Serbia
where he is still serving a prison sentence.
Another way to make the witnesses tell the most fantastic stories
are the so-called “plead guilty” lawsuits: someone who is accused of
having committed war crimes himself and who has testified already can be
convicted in a summary procedure without the prosecution having to
investigate and to prove the confession. The only important thing is
that the right persons are being charged. The most well known example is
the case of the Bosnian Croat Drazen Erdemovic, who pleaded guilty in
1996 to having served in the army of the Bosnian Serbs and having
participated at the so-called “Srebrenica massacre” in July 1995.
In 2000 Erdemovic was set free and was offered a new identity. Since
then he has served the prosecution as a protected witness in several
trials. Even the charge of having committed “genocide” in Srebrenica
against the former Bosnian Serbian president Radovan Karadzic and his
army chief General Ratko Mladic is based on Mr. Erdemovic’s confessions.
The German-speaking journalist Germinal Civikov has written a book
that deals with all the contradictory statements Erdemovic has given,
and all the obvious lies he is telling.[5]
The German-language online magazine “Schattenblick” has published an
article on the tribunal’s dealings with the Bosnian Serb officer Momir
Nikolic, who was pressured to incriminate himself and others with
regard to alleged crimes that are supposed to have taken place in
Srebrenica. In exchange for this the prosecution offered to take back
the charge of “genocide” against the officer and “only” blame him for
having committed “crimes against humanity”. But they did not succeed:
“Nikolic, who was sentenced to 27 years, said in another case
against one of his officer colleagues that he had been lying throughout.
His lies were exposed by the American attorney Micheal Karnavas. He
testified not to have ordered the alleged mass execution he had been
blamed for and that he was not even at the place where the crime is
supposed to have taken place. The attorney of the other accused officer
demonstrated how Nikolic had confirmed that he had to “give something”
to the prosecuting counsel, something he “did not have” for reducing
his prison punishment to 20 years. Thus the model-witness for the
“Srebrenica massacre” was “burned” judicially as well as
politically.”[6]
Seselj had already mentioned the use of “false witnesses” in his
testimony at the Milosevic trial in September 2005. Momir Nikolic also
plays a role in his testimony, in the context of the trial against
another officer, Miroslav Deronjic:
“I was an eyewitness in the prison of The Hague Tribunal as to how
Miroslav Deronjic was broken down by The Hague Tribunal, how they
blackmailed him and the process of breaking him down. I was on good
terms with him to begin with. He told me how he was arrested, how he was
beaten, how they put him in a barrel of water and so on and so
forth…it took months to break him down. And they didn’t succeed in
breaking him down until Momir Nikolic, in his testimony before the
Prosecution, said that Deronjic was present at a conversation where an
execution was agreed. Well, then Deronjic broke down completely and
agreed to testify on any subject whatsoever and against anybody
whatsoever. He agreed to falsely testify against Karadzic.”[7]
Another important key witness of the prosecution who probably had
been pressured was the former President of the Krajina Serbs, Milan
Babic. He testified against Milosevic, blaming him of being responsible
for war crimes. Seselj doubted his credibility as a witness:
“For example, Milan Babic, during his testimony mentioned my name on
several occasions in a completely false context. And I’m conscious of
it being a false context.”[8]
Babic will not be able to be questioned any more: he died in his
cell in The Hague in March 2006, officially because of suicide, one week
prior to Milosevic’s death under suspicious circumstances.
This and other examples are the subject of a new book written by a
Swiss researcher with Serbian roots, Alexander Dorin [9], who…is
researching facts, legends and the methods of justice in The Hague
concerning the happenings in Srebrenica. But Ms Del Ponte is also facing
dissatisfaction from unexpected circles, the ones she is claiming to
fight for: the organisation “Mothers of Srebrenica”, founded by Bosnian
Muslim women whose sons died in the war, blame Del Ponte for having
destroyed their personal belongings that were supposed to help determine
the causes of their sons’ deaths:
“Members of the Women of Srebrenica NGO are gathering signatures to
file a lawsuit against former Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. […]Our
memories have been murdered as well and Carla Del Ponte must be held
responsible,” the organization said. Current Chief Hague Prosecutor
Serge Brammertz confirmed in May of last year that some 1,000 pieces of
evidence recovered from mass graves in and around Srebrenica were
destroyed. Brammertz said this was regular procedure, implemented as the
evidence could not be archived.”[10]
The justification of the destruction of “IDs, photographs and pieces
of clothing” (B92) with the lack of sufficient storage space to archive
them appears strange indeed, if one considers that we are talking
about an incident that politicians and the mainstream media claim to be
the “worst massacre in Europe since World War Two”. And in the ongoing
trial against Radovan Karadzic, the politician[’s] planned conviction
for his alleged responsibility for “genocide” is supposed [to] be
justified with the Srebrenica case. The question should be allowed
(without any intention to downplay the suffering of the Mothers of
Srebrenica) if the destroyed documents maybe did not fully sustain the
official version of the happenings in Srebrenica. After all, there was
extensive fighting in the region, especially when soldiers of the
Bosnian Muslim army were trying to break through the Serbian lines and
reach the Muslim-controlled town of Tuzla. Dorin speaks of 2000
soldiers who died during the fighting and are now being counted as
“massacre victims”.[11] Or, if soldiers were actually murdered, this
alone is not conclusive evidence for a crime that was ordered from
above, as the prosecutors of the tribunal pretend to know.
…
David Owen, the British politician who was the former negotiator from
the European community for Yugoslavia, testified in at the Milosevic
trial and spoke of a phone call he received in April 1993 from the
former Serbian president, who was then already worried about the
situation in the region:
“I rarely heard Milosevic so exasperated and also so worried. He
feared that if the Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica, there would
be a bloodbath because of the tremendous bad blood that existed between
the two armies.”[13]
Many other writers are nowadays contributing to the debunking of the
official version of what happened in Srebrenica…The media’s prejudgment
of Serbia, with the use of the term “genocide” when referring to
Srebrenica as its climax, has enabled the tribunal to act in ways that
serve neither the finding of truth nor the reconciliation between the
Yugoslav peoples. The construction of “evidence” with the use of
dishonest methods is intended only to justify in retrospect the western
politics towards the Serbs as an “inevitable reaction” to their “savage
and ruthless” behaviour.
So The Hague is using a strategy of creating “evidence” that [works
backwards from a pre-determined conclusion and] puts the blame solely on
the Serbian policymakers who were in power during the war, holding
them personally responsible for the planning and execution of all the
atrocities that took place in the civil war. A conflict that actually
was fuelled from the outside is being presented to the western public as
a “joint criminal enterprise” for the creation of an ethnically
cleansed “Greater Serbia”.
It can be assumed that the tribunal will find a way to whitewash
itself from the accusations. But the fact that the prosecutors will for
the first time be forced to explain some of their strange conduct
before a broader public restores an inkling of hope that the mainstream
version of what happened with Yugoslavia will not be the one that
people will learn in the future.
In a paper by Stefan Karganovich, president of Dutch NGO “Srebrenica
Historical Project,” Karganovich deconstructs the way the ICTY put
together the “evidence” to fulfill a charge of “genocide” at Srebrenica.
While the paper is not all that long (four pages), it’s too detailed
to go into here; however, Karganovich’s introduction summary
underscores the overall implications of allowing the Hague to get away
with what it’s gotten away with so far: