Where's Ratko?
Have you seen this man? He's Ratko Mladic, the butcher of Srebrenica. The collective legal apparatus of Serbia, Europe, and the world need your help in finding him, because they apparently can't find their own asses with both hands, a mirror, and all the lights on.

It's been nearly a year since Serbia promised to deliver Mladic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) by the end of April 2006, following an extension of a deadline by the European Union in relation to Serbia's application for accession to that body. In the following weeks, the noose seemed to tighten with several arrests of people suspected of supporting Mladic, but the deadline came and went. A flurry of reports like this one suggested that Mladic had been located in a former Yugoslavian republic a few weeks earlier, was cut off, and that a team of British MI-6, CIA, and Serbian BIA intelligence agents was on the case. But nothing happened.

What is Mladic charged with, exactly? From the amended Mladic indictment handed by ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte on October 11, 2002:

RATKO MLADIC

with GENOCIDE, COMPLICITY IN GENOCIDE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY, and VIOLATIONS OF THE LAWS OR CUSTOMS OF WAR, as set forth herein: [...]

25. As Commander of the Main Staff of the VRS,* General Ratko MLADIC, acting individually and in concert with other members of the joint criminal enterprise, participated in the joint criminal enterprise from no later than 12 May 1992 until at least 22 December 1996 in the following ways:
    
    
1. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing a campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide, within BiH,* by establishing control of the municipalities listed in Paragraph 36 of the indictment; attacking and destroying non-Serb towns and villages, as well as looting, destroying, and/or appropriating residential, commercial and religious properties in the municipalities; killing and terrorising the non-Serb inhabitants, and submitting them to cruel and inhumane treatment and conditions, including physical, psychological and sexual abuse, often in detention facilities; using non-Serbs for forced labour, including at front lines, and as human shields; imposing restrictive and discriminatory measures on the non-Serb population; and separating, deporting, and permanently removing non-Serbs who did not subjugate themselves to Serb authorities;
   
   
2. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing a protracted military campaign of artillery and mortar shelling and sniping into civilian areas of Sarajevo and upon its civilian population and institutions, killing and wounding civilians, and thereby inflicting terror upon its civilian population;
   
   
3. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or executing an operation to take UN military observers and UN peacekeepers as hostages following NATO air strikes on 25 and 26 May 1995;
   
   
4. Planning, preparing, facilitating, or further executing the campaign of persecutions, which included acts of genocide, after the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, by forcibly transferring the Bosnian Muslim women and children from the Srebrenica enclave to Kladanj; capturing, detaining, summarily executing, and burying thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica, all of whom were either separated from the group of Bosnian Muslim refugees in Potocari or captured from the column of Bosnian Muslim men escaping the Srebrenica enclave; and exercising command and control over an organised and comprehensive operation designed to conceal the execution campaign by exhuming bodies from the initial mass graves and reburying them, en masse, in isolated secondary locations; [...]

Most of this post was written in the summer of 2005, in anticipation of Mladic's capture. As 2005 drew to a close, I kept dating it with a future date -- "July 1, 2006" ... "December 31, 2006" ... "December 1, 2007" -- to keep it at the top of my drafts list as time passed.

But of course I was kidding myself. Now that Serbia has been acquitted of genocide by the ICJ (the acronym stands for "International Caricature of Justice"), I don't see Mladic being turned over any time soon; any time ever, really. So my hat's off to you, Ratko, wherever you are; if it's a choice between you and the judges of the ICJ, at any rate, the better man has won.

There used to be a little Reader's Digest section called "Laughter makes the world go round." But that bit of pablum surely deserves a corollary when it's people like Mladic doing the laughing. Like Hitler's laughter at his Tischgespraeche, Mladic's laughter somewhere today is slowing a shabbier, sadder world in its tracks.

You know what? I hope the ICTY doesn't find Mladic -- I hope the Bosnians do. But you know what else: wouldn't it be just a complete disgrace -- not to say disaster -- if Al Qaeda did?


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* Abbreviations: "VRS": Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina/Republika Srpska; "BiH": Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:06:00 AM -- |  

 
Nuhanovic's choice -- and his son's question
It occurs to me that the ICJ decision acquitting Serbia of genocide in the case of the 1995 Srebrenica massacres simply bookends the international commmunity's deep involvement -- even complicity -- in those atrocities. The senior officers of a Dutch "peacekeeping" battalion assigned by UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) to safeguard the town decided they didn't want to be a tripwire and stood aside as Ratko Mladic's forces occupied the doomed town. In their defense, it's not clear what higher levels of UNPROFOR would have done, if anything, had the Dutch forces actually engaged the larger and better armed Bosnian Serb forces advancing into the enclave, bent on killing any men or boys left there. As David Rohde wrote in "Endgame":

The international community partially disarmed thousands of men, promised them they would be safefuarded and then delivered them to their sworn enemies. Srebrenica was not simply a case of the international community standing by as a far-off atrocity was committed. The actions of the international community encouraged, aided and emboldened the executioners.

A survivor recounts what happened to his father, who had taken refuge with hundreds of other Srebrenicans on the grounds of the Dutch compound in Potocari, just north of Srebrenica:

My case is one of the most terrible in terms of the international community’s role. The Dutch major Robert Franken told me to explain to my father that he can remain on the base. My father asks what will happen to his younger son and my mother. Franken tells me: "Hasan, tell your father that if he does not want to stay, he can go too. And there’ll be no further discussion." My father had three seconds to decide whether he wants to stay on the base, to go on living with his elder son, or go and die with his younger son and his wife. He chose to leave. A month ago, at the court in The Hague, Major Franken coolly states that he gave him a choice. What sort of choice?

-- Hasan Nuhanovic, 15 July 2005, to the Croatian newspaper Globus, as cited in a 2005 article by Guido Snel.

It's true that the blame for Srebrenica belongs belongs mainly with Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, and their followers; they are the ones who compelled Srebrenicans to make the bitter choices they did. But it's also true that the Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica and their superior officers in Sarajevo and at the United Nations in New York had a duty to the world and their own honor to do better than they did. We'll never know how much difference more courage might have made.

Likewise, now we'll never know how much difference a little judicial courage might have made -- only that thirteen judges failed to do their duty to the world and their own honor; far from assisting human progress, they have thwarted it. And not even at gunpoint, but in a comfortable courtroom in what were presumably well paid and (until now) highly honored positions.

Those judges may coolly reply that at they have done what international law and international justice demand. But Hasan Nuhanovic may well ask: what sort of law? what sort of justice? posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:15:00 PM -- |  

 
ICJ: Srebrenica was genocide. Serbian police were involved...
...yet Serbia cleared of genocide, failed to stop killing (Alexandra Hudson, Reuters):

ICJ President Judge Rosalyn Higgins said the court concluded that the Srebrenica massacre did constitute genocide, but that other mass killings of Bosnian Muslims did not.

But she said the court ruled that the Serbian state could not be held directly responsible for genocide, so paying reparations to Bosnia would be inappropriate even though Serbia had failed to prevent genocide and punish the perpetrators.

A summary of today's rulings can be read at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) web site, along with detailed verdicts and dissents and a recording of Judge Higgins' reading of the decisions.

Fifteen select judges took a long time to come to these decisions, and did so by fairly sizeable margins (13-2 against Serbian responsibility for genocide, 10-5 for having jurisdiction, 11-4 not even complicit in genocide, for crying out loud, etc.).

Let's assume for the sake of argument that they came to the best decision they could in accordance with international law and specifically the international law of genocide -- despite being aware that Serbian police units were videotaped participating in Srebrenica killings; that the International Criminal Court had enough evidence to put the Serbian head of state Slobodan Milosevic on trial for genocide; and that one of the chief architects of the Srebrenica massacres, "General" Ratko Mladic, remains at large and has been acknowledged to have been on the Serbian military payroll after going underground.

We may therefore provisionally conclude that either that body of law or its application by the worthy jurists of the ICJ is so limited as to be useless. This seems like a black day for justice as mere laypeople like me or those waiting for justice in Bosnia will understand it.

Useless? Useless at best. Between them, Serbia and the ICJ have now apparently identified the level of deniability and legal hocus-pocus needed to dodge a genocide verdict and the reparations that might have entailed. I wonder whether that's what the ICJ's judges, creators, and supporters intended, but I think that's what they got. In the future, the piety that "if you want peace, work for justice" will have a bitter, fraudulent ring if you're from Sarajevo, if it didn't already. To say nothing of Srebrenica. You'd be much better off praying for close air support, or taking up arms with a fury yourself. Darfurians will be justified to take note. In fact, they'd better: the Sudanese government certainly will.


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ADDENDA: From Judge Vice-President Al-Khasawneh's dissenting opinion:

...the Judgment considers two documents presented by the Applicant, in which there is reference to the “Scorpions” as “MUP of Serbia” and a “unit of Ministry of Interiors of Serbia”. The paragraph notes that the authenticity of the documents was disputed by the Respondent presumably because “they were copies of intercepts, but not originals”. But it is plain that if the Court insisted on original documents, it would never be able to render any judgments. Be this as it may, the other reason advanced to undermine the importance of these documents is that they are not addressed to Belgrade, the senders being “officials of the police forces of the Republika Srpska”. But this in itself does not deny their probative value. When an official of the Republika Srpska sends a telegram to his superior in which the Scorpions are described as “MUP of Serbia” or “a unit of Ministry of Interiors of Serbia”, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of this statement.

From Judge ad hoc Mahiou's dissenting opinion as translated by ICJ (emphases added):

I cannot subscribe to most of the substantive findings reached by the Court by way of what I believe to be: a timorous, questionable view of its role in the evidentiary process, a deficient examination of the evidence submitted by the Applicant, a rather odd interpretation of the facts in the case and of the rules governing them and, finally, a method of reasoning which remains unconvincing on a number of very important points. [...] In my view, the Respondent’s responsibility appears clearly established in respect of Republika Srpska’s actions, either because of the very close ties between that entity and the Respondent, resulting in the Respondent’s implication in the ethnic cleansing plan carried out between 1992 and 1995, or because of the relationship of subordination or control between the Respondent and those who played a crucial role in that ethnic cleansing, which extended to the commission of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

EDIT, 2/27: Photo, caption added. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:58:00 PM -- |