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Tribunale Bologna 24.07.2007, n.7770 - ISSN 2239-7752 Direttore responsabile: Antonio Zama The hague tribunal: justice ad hoc or instrument of the situational policy in the balkans 21 Marzo 2020 Angelina Markovska ?bstract Until very recently, the establishment, organization, structure, funding, and criminal convictions of the Inter national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were unambiguously accepted as deserved justice ove r people who committed war crimes in the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II. It see med to many that this structure, under the auspices of the United Nations, was a well-oiled mechanism in in ternational criminal law. The purpose of the paper is to approach critically some of the facts in the case aga inst general Ratko Mladic, questioning the impartiality of the court and the justice of the obtained verdicts. Table of Contents: 1. Introduction 2. The procedure 3. The process 4. The verdict 1. Introduction Criminals or heroes are the defendants of the International Tr ibunal in The Hague? This question will always have at least t hree answers depending on the ethnicity of the respondent. Undisputed, however, are several facts. Firstly, the transfer of war criminals became a bargaining chip to start accession negotiations with some of the former Yugoslav republics to the European Union. Wi th the transfer of General Ante Gotovina in 2005, this is Croatia, and in 2011 Serbia played its trick (it turne d out not so successfully) with the extradition of General Ratko Mladic. Secondly, trading in testimon y turns into a lucrative business that has led a number of former members of paramilitary troops to obtain residence abroad in exchange for false testimony and prosecutors have “obtained” the necessa ry evidence for indictments. The most compromising turns out this practice for prosecution in the case of Vojislav Seselj. He manage s to discredit the false witnesses and ultimately is acquitted by the tribunal of all charges. Thirdly, the pract ice of “bargain with prosecutors” became contagious for much of the defendants, bringing their minimum s entences for involvement in proven serious crimes. The mechanism is as follows: recognition of “culpabilit y” on one of the charges (and in most cases they are at least on 8-9 points), and then the accusations against others automatically ceased. It is this procedure that has been applied in the trial against Bilyana Plavsic, B osnian commander Nasser Orac and many others. Until very recently, the establishment, organization, structure, funding, and judgments of the Internationa l Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia were unambiguously accepted as deserved justice over pe ople who committed war crimes in the most significant conflict in Europe since World War II. It seeme d to many that this structure, under the auspices of the United Nations, was a well-oiled mechanism in inter national criminal law. The assessment was mainly due to informative media publications and by authors strongly biased tow ards one of the parties to the conflict. Serious analytical studies were considerably rarely over a pe riod of 25 years in which the tributal exists. This is more than three times over the entire duration of the c onflict, suggesting at least a poor and ineffective organization of work and a hidden impetus – the tribunal’ s huge administration to continue to receive its excessive remunerations. By comparison, we will point out that the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo trial were organized and conducted for about two to three year s in a much larger military conflict of about 50 million victims. Only this comparison is enough to raise doubts about the overall functioning of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The Hague tribunal is the kind of political tribunals created after World War II, but in a much milder ve rsion. It was established in 1993 as a United Nations structure with the Resolution 827 of the Security Coun cil. The full name of this institution is “International Tribunal for prosecution of persons responsible for se rious violations of international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991”. It is conceived and implemented as an instrument of situational policy. Behind the request to become an eff ective model for the implementation of international humanitarian law, ad hoc justice in the sense of a temporary, established on a specific occasion, under extraordinary circumstances or for a particular person. The court ad hoc, as it remains outside the accepted norms of justice, not a real court, and accordin g to some researchers – a tool of political reprisals. The Hague tribunal turns out to be anything but a model for imposing liberal legislation. Its emergence is a classic example of diplomatic impotence and the use of a “legal ideal” to advance a certain political and leg al agenda. It is a fact that the tribunal was created at the request of Justice Minister and later Foreign Minister of United Germany, Klaus Kinkel – representative of a country which is not a member of the Security Council . The other interesting fact is that the Russian diplomatic representative at the UN voted for, which subsequ ently changed diametrically, along with the Russian position on the legitimacy and work of the tribuna l. Obviously in 1993 was not expected what followed. Ever since its formation, the purpose of the tribunal and its re sponsibilities are extremely unrealistic for civil conflicts with ha rdly identifiable actors. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 (integrating the previous three ones) refers to the treatment of w ar prisoners and war crimes only in the context of inter-state con flicts, but not civil wars. There is also a dispute between lawyers in international criminal law about the legitimacy of the Hague tribunal: according to some it may be the result of a decision by the UN Assembly, according to others, by the Security Council. Significantly, states like India, Chile and a dozen others do not recognize it. There are a number of controversial moments about the specifics of administrative procedures and funding. The tribunal must complete its work in 2012 and it will continue until the end of 2017 with a budge t that has not been voted on. Indeed, the tribunal’s finance finances exceeded those voted by the United Nation. The witnesses become a problem as well. The prosecutor’s office has repeatedly resort to the use of proven war criminals who have been summoned as witnesses against inconvenient politicians who have virtually no real guilt for war crimes. It even creates something like a stock exchange where stock -defaming shares are traded on a pay-as-you-go basis. The focus of the proposed article falls discussion on the case of General Ratko Mladic trial which proved not only symptomatic of the nature of the work of the international court, but one of the most expensive in the history of the tribunal-according to the latest data just over 2 million Euros. General Ratko Mladic is the last of superiors political and military leaders-emblems of the Yugoslav wars of 1991-1995 g, which is facing the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. His verdict at first instan ce is the penultimate in the history of the tribunal as such. Unlike the others, Mladic’s distincts is that for the first time the role of the Serbian state as an “accomplice ” in the crimes is totally ignored. Mladic is found guilty of all charges except for some cases of genocide in certain municipalities. This provoked a serious debate and a great deal of frustration among a number of obs ervers. As well as for evaluating his actions Mladic largely gets what he wants – Autonomous Region of Bosnian S erbs. He is adored in Republika Srpska. His portrait adorns the walls of bars and office buildings in Bosnia and Serbia, his name chanted at football matches. Even the Hague tribunal chief prosecutor, Serge Bramme rtz, admits that sometimes “conflicts and atrocities can acquire their own logic”. But it is a fact that in 2017 inter-religious tensions in Bosnia are greater than ever after the war. All the republics that participated in the conflict are settling in the comfort zone of mutual hatred, which is by accident and financially benefic ial for their political class at the helm. Enlighten public in the last months of 2017 facts about the financ ial costs throughout the criminal proceedings against the militar y leader of the Bosnian Serbs are shocking. Just over two million Euros cost the Hague tribunal, Republika Srpska and Serbia the protection of Mladic, plus the cost of visiting his relatives in custo dy and personal expenses. This amount has not been added to th e cost of prosecutors and their support staff, which, according to one of Mladic’s lawyers, Miodrag Stojanovic, are several times more. The tribunal refuses to give a precise account of the cost of the prosecution. Experts describe Mladic’s trial, not only as one of the most difficult but also the most expensive in the histo ry of the tribunal – just over six million euros. According to the internal working classification, the case aga inst Mladic (as well as those against Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic) belongs to the so-called ca tegory “A” – with the greatest degree of difficulty, which is why the employees’ fees are the highest. To be rational in our assessment, it is undeniable that the processes against the top leaders in the political and mili tary hierarchy prove to be the most profitable for prosecutors, judges and lawyers. These are the court proc eedings with the longest duration.

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