Avoid Bosnia Tribunal's Pitfalls, UN Envoy Says

NO PEACE WITHOUT JUSTICE id, IE24,1998 U.U. (OWHŒ OH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AH INTERNATIONAL (RIHIHAL COURT Big Fish Remain Free Avoid Bosnia Tribunal's Pitfalls, UN Envoy Says •••he International Gri- The Bosnian government has A Feslering Wound \ ll ;i· minai Court (ICC) particularly accused Yugoslav •IIP' must go beyond the President Slobodan Milosevic of From the IPS le 1 efforts of the UN orchestrating the war effort in • tribunals for the Bosnia-Hercegovina, but other Gossip former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to governments - including the United tal's Up in Rome I) prosecute top officials if it hopes to States - have relied on Milosevic as deter future atrocities, argued a diplomatic counterweight to Bosnia's UN ambassador, extremist nationalist forces in CICC Monitor Muhamed Sacirbey. Serbia. Sacirbey contended that what he The Bosnian envoy told Terra conference at Rome, which has Viva that, so far, the promise of the claims is the "selective" gathering of data by some nations could also debated whether to include war crimes tribunal for the former aggression as one of the crimes the Yugoslavia has not been Court might prosecute, realised because key shows the complexity of indicted suspects are still at the debate over how large. "The tribunal hasn't aggression is defined, really succeeded in Sacirbey said. bringing to justice the "There is a much highest political officials in broader definition of the region responsible for aggression that applies genocide," Sacirbey now than the one thai argued. appears might be codified "I'm not sure that the in the statute," the ICC would serve a useful ambassador argued. "We deterrent function if it cannnot support the idea simply tries the lower-level of a very narrow defini- suspects, and (tries) the tion of aggression, so that highest-level suspects only it only applies to a when they are dead or out situation analogous to the of power, like Pol Pot," he Nazi invasion of Poland." added. In modern times, he argued, In Bosnia's case, the UN pose a potential problem for the ICC. more savvy leaders have been able ambassador has insisted for years "At least some UN Security Council to foment aggression in neigh- that nations have proof that regio- members might not be state parties" bouring countries without resorting nal leaders were complicit in the to the statute that is to create the to obvious invasions. atrocities in the Bosnian war, in Court, Sacirbey said. "Some states The Bosnia war is a case in point, which more than 2(X),(X)0 people are that may have the greatest capacity he said, with the fledgling republic estimated to have been killed. Yet to obtain evidence through attacked by soldiers who belonged many of those leaders hav intelligence-gathering facilities to or were paid by foreign countries thought useful to full might therefore not be parties." - such as Gen Ratko Mladic, a paid negotiationsqjtfi&jcour Nor is that the only problem the soldier of the Yugoslav National been unwilling(Wuii) ICC could inherit from the Bosnia Army - but who would claim to be .them, Sacii tribunal. The current ICC members of Bosnian armed forces, more on page>2 PURL: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/dca9ef/ Rome, June 24,1998 Terra Viva is an independent 1C): Consent Régime a Ticket to Immunity publication of Inter Press Service. Publisher .ΐίΐβ* h§:lnternational Criminal Court (ICC) must have inherent jurisdiction over the Roberto Savio if·:; core crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity if it is to be . · '. Κ ' 'Jiffective, argues the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (1CJ). Managing Editor lie 1CJ, in a briefing paper prepared this week, contends that "leaving these crimes to Alejandro Kirk the requirement of additional declarations, in addition to the act of ratification, in particular Editor on a case-by-case basis, would mean allowing the states to (make) immune certain individuals Johanna Son from prosecution whenever this would seem politically opportune." TJie Commission evaluates four different options in its brief: a "consent regime", in Senior Reporter which! states can evaluate on a case-by-case basis whether the ÎCC has jurisdiction, and Farhan Haq proposals by Britain, Germany and South Korea. Reporters The British proposal requires the consent - acquired simply by ratifying the ICC statute Alison Dickens - of the state on whose territory the crime was committed; the German proposal argues for Jorge Pifia the ICC to have automatic jurisdiction over all core crimes, even for countries not party to Stefano Fblumbo the statute. The South Korean language is a compromise, in which any one of a broad category of involved states could consent to ICC jurisdiction by ratifying the statute. Art "The very task of the ICC is to investigate and prosecute those crimes states fail to Winnie Dobbs investigate and prosecute," the ICJ argues. "Demanding their consent to dp so will often Photographer endanger the very purpose of this court." The Commission therefore favours the German Mihai Romanciuc proposai for allowing automatic jurisdiction over all core crimes. However, it adds that if states cannot agree on granting such wide-ranging jurisdiction, Chief, Technical Services the Korean compromise "seems to link the Court's jurisdiction sufficiently with the consent Mauro Teodori of interested states" and "should be considered as second best". IPS-lnter Press Service is an international non-profit asso- ciation of journalists. It enjoys continued from page 1 NGO consultative status thereby transforming the fighting from an external to an internal conflict. (Category 1) with the United Nor does Bosnia accept the idea that it must fall to the UN Security Nations Economic and Social Council. Council to define what constitutes aggression. "It's clear that the debate in the Security Council on issues of aggression and genocide is politically Printed at FAO divisive," Sacirbey said, noting that at times the Council has opted instead to use similar, but less legally suggestive, phrases like "acts of aggression" Terra Viva is produced in to depict the same crimes. partnership by IPS and No "Will we end up with a situation...that aggression is so narrowly defined ffeace Without Justice, with the that a charge could never be brought against a standing leader?" he asked. support of the European Union, the Open Society Institute and "If the ICC or its prosecutor are made subject to the control of political the Coalition for an Inter- bodies, whether the Security Council or state parties, it will have no credibility national Criminal Court. and international justice will be seriously compromised," added Justice Richard Goldstone, the former prosecutor for both the former Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals. Terra Viva and the CICC Monitor Goldstone argued at the conference underway here that the ICC in some are independent publications, respects faces even stronger challenges than the tribunals, which were created respectively, of Inter Press by the Security Council and are enforced under the powerful Chapter Seven :Service and of the NGO of the UN Charter, encountered. "Clearly a war crimes tribunal acting under Coalition for an International Chapter Seven is in the best, most advantageous position," he said. Criminal Court. IPS and CICC are Referring to the lack of arrests of such key Bosnian Serb suspects as solely responsible for the edito- rial content of their respective Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic, Goldstone added: "If arrests papers. aren't being carried out (in those cases) ... what hope is there for a treaty- based ICC (to do better)?" Goldstone doubted that the ICC will have any standing police force empowered to make arrests, as the Bosnia tribunal has in effect had with the intermittent cooperation by NATO forces. "The tribunals would seem to have a significantly greater theoretical authority than the ICC, especially as it relates to the duty of natioas to cooperate," Sacirbey it conceded. Yet for all that, the tribunals have not deterred further war crimes in ύ NO PEACE WITHOUT either the former Yugoslavia or in Central Africa's Great Lakes region. JUSTICE As the Bosnian ambassador noted, UN armoured personnel carriers that Coalition were seized during the 1995 Bosnian Serb invasion of Srebrenica - in which CI (or an International some 7,000 Muslim civilians were believed to have been killed - have surfaced Criminal Court in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo where, he argued, they have been used to commit "further acts of ethnic cleansing". Yet despite that, he said, Yugoslav leaders have never been indicted by any tribunal, and remain undeterred in their acts. Farhan Haq/IPS 2 PURL: https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/dca9ef/ Rome, June 24,1998 Forensic Science Unearths War Crimes LONDON massacres on the scale of crimes against humanity in Iraqi • n late summer of 1996, the world learnt the Kurdistan, and genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Λ importance of forensic science to the Rwanda. I investigation of war crimes when an international Largely due to PHR's work, for the first time since tribunal set up by the U.N. sentscientists to study mass the post-World War II trials at Nuremberg, international graves in the former Yugoslavia. criminal tribunals were set up in 1993 and 1994 to These specialists, however, were simply continuing prosecute individuals for war crimes committed in the work begun earlier by the Physicians for Human Rights former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. (PHR), a Boston-based organisation of health Tribunal prosecutors then asked PHR to assist in professionals, scientists and concerned citizens that uses exhumation and exami- the knowledge and skills of the medical and forensic nation of mass graves. In sciences to investigate and prevent human rights 1996, Haglund and a violations.

Load more