Back to Byronica Page Back to Home Page
THE
MILOSEVIC TRIAL Edward S. Herman
The
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or Tribunal)
was created in 1993 by the major NATO powers, notably the United States and
Germany, to go after Serbian leaders and personnel, as part of the buildup to a
war against Serbia and the remnant Yugoslavia. With an extremely clear public
relations and political role in support of NATO policy, the Tribunal has been
‘international’ or ‘independent’ only in a Pickwickian sense. Its abuses of the
principles of Western jurisprudence have been spectacular from its beginning to
today. It represents an egregious case of the powerful using a nominal cover of
law to help attack and dismantle a small country; a case of what Diana
Johnstone, referring to the Tribunal’s work from 1993-1998, calls futue
victors’ justice. Since the NATO war and subsequent political conquest of
Yugoslavia, and with the current trial of Milosevic, we have a more familiar
case of straightforward ‘victor’s justice.’ This hugely politicized
operation has nonetheless been an outstanding public relations success for the
NATO powers. This is because the Western media, and especially the U.S. media,
have treated it uncritically, and allowed NATO to get away with murder, both
figuratively and literally. The familiar demonization-of-the-enemy process, the
allegations of ‘genocide,’ the intense focus on selected victims, context
stripping, and institutionalized myths, have allowed NATO to appear a
humanitarian instrument and have made for an intellectual and moral environment
in which fine points, even gross points, of judicial bias and injustice are of
little account. In this article I will review
some major features of the history of the Tribunal that demonstrate its
political role, extreme bias, and systematic violation of elementary rules of
jurisprudence. I will show that there are striking similarities between this
prosecutor-dominated Tribunal and the Moscow treason trials of the 1930s. In
Part 2 I will describe how the media--and the New Humanitarian intellectuals
who readily access the media--have ignored these inconvenient facts, instead
following the lead of the Tribunal prosecutors and NATO officials, while
blacking out all relevant critical context. In Part 3 I will analyse the institutionalized
untruths that are Tribunal premises, and which pervade the media, from In
These Times and The Nation to the New York Times, Washington Post,
and CNN and network TV. One important consequence
of the media’s performance is its incompatability with a fair trial of
Milosevic in the Hague. By prejudging the case in a biased, ignorant, and
highly emotional way, thereby mobilizing public anger and hatred at the man on
trial, the media create a set of understandings and expectations that would make
a verdict of not guilty seem outrageous… The media speedily find the official
truth self-evident, ignore or marginalize inconvenient facts and analyses, and
thereby facilitate official policy actions, just as in a totalitarian state. In the Milosevic case, however,
the outcome is already assured by the purpose, personnel, and structure of the
Tribunal, given that a guilty verdict is essential in justifying the U.S. and
NATO war and conquest of Yugoslavia. It will be the final and most important
propaganda service that the Tribunal carries out for its organizers, funders,
and controllers, as will be made clear below. But the media role remains very
important in concealing from the public the gross abuses of the Tribunal and
its service as a political and propaganda agent of the United States and NATO.
This concealment will help make future ‘humanitarian interventions’ and ‘wars
on terrorism’ more palatable, having shown that the war against Yugoslavia had
a moral basis, stopping yet another Hitler. Some Tribunal Context 1. Mother and Father, Albright
and Kinkel, Define Its Purpose. The original drive for the Tribunal was led by
German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel, who pushed for it as early as August
1992, and quite explicitly wanted it to prosecute the Serbs for
‘genocide.’ His role in initiating the
Tribunal led its first president, Antonio Cassese, to refer to Kinkel as the
father of the Tribunal. Gabrielle Kirk McDonald,
Cassese’s successor as president, noting that Madeleine Albright had worked
with unceasing resolve to establish the Tribunal, referred to her as mother
of the Tribunal. The man who wrote the Tribunal’s Statute for Albright,
Michael Scharf, spoke frankly about its political purpose: The Tribunal was
“widely perceived within the government as little more than a public relations
device and ... useful policy tool… Indictments... would serve to isolate
offending leaders diplomatically, and fortify the international political will
to employ economic sanctions or use force.” (WP, Oct. 3, 1999). Note the
proposed role of indictments, which would serve political ends prior to a trial
and verdict, in contradiction to Western principles of jurisprudence. 2. Dubious Legality. The
Security Council had no legal basis under the UN Charter for establishing a
judicial body, but it ignored that nicety, claiming that Chapter VII, which
granted it the right to ‘take measures’ and ‘establish subsidiary bodies’ in
the interest of maintaining ‘peace and security,’ gave it that authority. This
legal trick circumvented the need to get non-NATO countries to accept the new
judicial body, and it has the advantage that all countries are obliged to
accept enforcement actions taken under Chapter VII. The argument was made that
the Tribunal’s actions taken on the basis of this judicial authority would
‘deter’ evil men and prevent war, but not only is this claim simple-minded, the
record shows that the Tribunal facilitated NATO’s pursuit of war. 3. Funding and Personnel.
Although Article 32 of the Tribunal’s charter says that Tribunal expenses
should be provided from the general budget of the UN, this proviso has been
violated continuously, and the Tribunal has had to depend on U.S. and other
governmental funding, the solicitation of George Soros and other interested private
donors, and ‘seconded’ personnel from (mainly) the NATO powers. In 1994-1995,
the United States provided the Tribunal with $700,000 in cash, $2.3 million in
equipment, and many seconded personnel, while failing to meet its legal funding
obligations to the UN. This funding dependency not
only makes for external control, it also permits the funders to direct Tribunal
operations in ways that suit their immediate political aims. Thus, for example,
the Clinton administration found $27 million during the bombing war to enable
the Tribunal to collect data on Serb war crimes from Albanian refugees.
(Gilbert Guillaume, President of the International Court of Justice [ICJ],
speaking on October 26, 2000 before the UN General Assembly, noted that the
ICTY gets ten times as much money as the ICJ, and he suggested that this was
because various parties engage in ‘forum shopping,’ or even create new forums,
that will be ‘more amenable to their arguments.’ He suggested that it was not
compatible with good judicial practice that courts should be ‘made subject to
the law of the marketplace.’) A large fraction of the
personnel of the Tribunal are from the NATO states, and many of these come from
the United States and Britain; in mid-1996, 23 of the 52 ‘seconded’ staff came
from the U.S. Departments of State, Defense and Justice. Top choices of
Tribunal officials are vetted by leaders of the dominant states. Those who
serve well, like former prosecutor Louise Arbour, are rewarded for this service
(she was quickly selected to be a Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court).
Others merely return to former jobs that should, in fact, have disqualified
them from Tribunal service: Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, former president of the
Tribunal, had been a director, and has returned as ‘Special Counsel to the
Chairman on Human Rights,’ of Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., a
notorious human rights violator working in West Papua with the cooperation of
the Indonesian army. When Milosevic was indicted in
May 1999, Dr. Hans Koechler, president of the International Progress
Organization (an NGO), noted that all high officers of the Tribunal were
citizens of the NATO states or their allies (Australia). He asked whether an
institution that observed legal norms of impartiality would not have found a ‘conflict
of interest for judges from countries waging an undeclared war against
Yugoslavia to sit on such a panel initiating judicial action against the
head of state of the country under attack?" 4. Contractual Relations
With NATO. On May 9, 1996, the Tribunal’s prosecutors signed a memo of
understanding with NATO that made it the official Tribunal gendarme. However,
Article 16 of the Tribunal’s charter states that the prosecutor shall act
independently and shall not seek or receive instruction from any government.
But the prosecutor cannot act independently if dependent on specific
governments for financing, personnel, and police service. And the Tribunal’s
prosecutors have not acted independently, as described below. During the bombing, NATO public
relations spokesman Jamie Shea was asked about NATO’s vulnerability to Tribunal
charges. He was not worried. The prosecutor, he said, will start her
investigation ‘because we will allow her to.’ Further, ‘NATO countries are
those that have provided the finance,’ and on the need to build a second
chamber ‘so that prosecutions can be speeded up...we and the Tribunal are all
one on this, we want to see war criminals brought to justice.’ And when Arbour
‘looks at the facts she will be indicting people of Yugoslav nationality and I
don’t anticipate any others at this stage’ (NATO press conference, May 17,
1999). 5. Explicit Service to NATO. A
major service to NATO took place at the time of the Racak ‘massacre’ in January
1999. Albright and her associates were then readying NATO and the public for a
war against Yugoslavia, and needed public relations support. When it was
reported that Kosovo Albanians had been killed at Racak, U.S. official William
Walker rushed to the scene and declared it an ‘unspeakable atrocity.’ On the
very next day Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour declared at a press conference
that she was opening an investigation into this crime. Within four days, having
consulted only NATO officials, she declared this to be a ‘war crime.’ This
declaration helped publicize the alleged crime, and although the facts in the
case were and remain in dispute, and the forensic report on the massacre
remains unreleased by the OSCE, this massacre was listed in the May 22, 1999
indictment of Milosevic and his colleagues. Then, on March 31, 1999, one
week after NATO bombing began, Arbour announced the indictment of Serb
paramilitary leader Arkan for crimes committed in Bosnia, which she had
prepared two years before but had kept secret until NATO needed public
relations cover for its bombing. The most dramatic Tribunal
service to NATO took place two months later. NATO had found that the Serbs were
not surrendering to air attacks on their military forces, so NATO therefore
turned to attacking the civil society, hitting bridges, factories, electric
power and water facilities, and even schools and hospitals. These attacks were
clear violations of international law--the Sixth Nuremberg Principle bars
targeting ‘not justified by military necessity’—and were causing a certain stir
of opposition even in the NATO countries. With perfect timing, on May 27th
Arbour announced the indictment of Milosevic, based on data about alleged Serb
killings provided by U.S. intelligence but otherwise unconfirmed. This enabled
Albright to note that the indictments ‘make clear to the world and the publics
in our countries that this [NATO policy] is justified’ (May 27, 1999),
facilitating further bombing—and further NATO violations of international law! At the same time Arbour
explained that, while individuals are ‘entitled to the presumption of innocence
until convicted,’ the indictments ‘raise serious questions about their
suitability to be guarantors of any deal, let alone a peace agreement.’ The
prosecutor thus took on the role of ‘surrogate politician’ (Koechler),
announcing her own political determination that Milosevic was to be ruled out
as a negotiator! On many other occasions, indictments were used by the Tribunal
to criminalize and effectively remove individuals from the negotiating process.
Milosevic had to depend on the Russians to negotiate on Yugoslavia’s behalf to
end the bombing war, and Bosnian Serb leaders Karadzic and Mladic were also
removed from any diplomatic process in Bosnia by indictments. By this route,
also, all were effectively demonized before trial and conviction, and any NATO
violence was justified in the public relation/media forum by Tribunal
indictments. 6. Exemption of NATO War
Crimes. NATO had conveniently excluded from the war crimes subject to Tribunal
jurisdiction what Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials declared to be the
worst crime: waging a war of aggression. NATO could therefore attack Yugoslavia
in violation of the UN Charter without thereby automatically committing a crime
subject to Tribunal authority. Nevertheless, Article 5 of the Tribunal’s
charter did make illegal ‘crimes against humanity,’ which includes ‘murder’ and
‘other inhumane acts;’ and Article 3 includes ‘employment of poisonous weapons
or other weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering,’ and ‘attack, or
bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or
buildings,’ etc. Articles 1 and 16 of the Tribunal’s governing statute oblige
it to prosecute any such illegal actions.
How Arbour and Del Ponte
wriggled out of even INVESTIGATING NATO’s war crimes, and the contrast
with their rapid service for NATO, is amusing in the grossness of the
difference between the two. Canadian law professor Michael Mandel describes how
in May 1999 he and a group of lawyers from North and South America filed a well
documented war crimes complaint against 68 NATO leaders, and traveled to the
Hague to make the case to Arbour and her successor Carla Del Ponte; and
"like literally thousands around the world, we demanded that Arbour and Del
Ponte enforce the law against NATO" (‘Politics And Human Rights In The
International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia: Our Case Against
NATO And The Lessons To Be Learned From It,’ Fordham International Law Journal
25: 95-128 [2001]). He eventually gave up when it became clear ‘that the
tribunal was a hoax.’ It took Del Ponte more than a year to announce, on June
2, 2000, that NATO was guilty of no crimes, ‘and that (rather illogically) she
was not opening an investigation into whether they had committed any’ (ibid.).
At that point she released a report of her Office of the Prosecutor (OTP),
openly based on the belief that ‘NATO and NATO countries’ press statements are
generally reliable and that explanations have been honestly given’ (Final
Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review the NATO
Bombing Campaign…, U.N Doc. PR/P.I.S./510-E [2000], available at
http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/nato061300.htm [hereafter OTP]). The OTP noted
however, that NATO sometimes refused to answer (‘failed to address the specific
incidents’); in which case, NATO not wanting an investigation, the OTP chose to
not look any further and simply dropped the subject! How is that for an
independent judicial assessment? In the indictment of Milosevic,
Arbour used evidence about events that took place only six weeks earlier from a
war zone, provided by an interested party (NATO). But neither she nor Del Ponte
could even ‘open an investigation’ on NATO, after a year, with overwhelming
evidence in the public domain on NATO actions that had killed many more than
the numbers presented in the initial Milosevic indictment. That indictment and
charge of ‘crimes against humanity’ was based on an alleged 385 killings; but
the OTP report found that 500 deaths attributable to NATO were too few to
rate—‘there is simply no evidence of the necessary crime base for charges of
genocide or crimes against humanity’! (Ibid., #53.) In examining possible NATO war
crimes, time after time the OTP would consider the evidence and then choose an
interpretation favorable to NATO, as in the bombing of Serbian broadcasting
facilities, or simply decide arbitarily that since ‘another interpretation is
equally available’ no investigation is needed (this in reference to NATO’s
bombing of a train on a bridge at Grdelica Gorge) (# 59-61). Michael Mandel
gives a number of examples of this mode of exoneration, which ‘comes as close
as possible to being an actual NATO press release that might have been issued
by Jamie Shea or James Rubin.’ After Del Ponte took over from
Arbour, she announced that her first priority would be to gather more evidence
on Milosevic, implicitly conceding that she didn’t have enough, but once again
making clear her NATO-service priorities. 7. Explicit Direction to Serbs;
Exemption of Croats and Bosnian Muslims. From the very first, the Serbs were
the NATO target, hence that of the Tribunal. As early as 1991 German foreign
minister Kinkel was accusing the Serbs of "genocide," and in December
1992, just as the Tribunal was in process of formation, Acting U.S. Secretary
of State Lawrence Eagleberger also publicly named four Serb leaders, Milosevic,
Radovan Karadzic, Mladic and Arkan, as the targets of the Tribunal. Tribunal
president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald referred to Serbia as a ‘rogue state,’ and
another Tribunal president Antonio Cassese expressed gratification that
‘indictments’ had made it impossible for Serb leaders to participate in
negotiations. (Cassese was not bothered by this abuse of indictments as a
political instrument.) Most of the indictments were
leveled against Serbs, and the double standard here was blatant. Serb
paramilitary leader Arkan was indicted, but not his Bosnian Muslim counterpart
Naser Oric, who had bragged to the media about his killing of Serb civilians. Serb leader Milan Martic was indicted in
1996 for launching a rocket cluster-bomb attack on military targets in Zagreb
in May 1995, on the ground that the rocket was ‘not designed to hit military
targets but to terrorize the civilians of Zagreb.’ But the NATO cluster-bombing
of Nis on May 7, 1999, which repeatedly hit a market and hospital far from any
military target, produced no indictments. And the massive ethnic cleansing of
Krajina by U.S.-advised Croatian forces in 1995, with many hundreds killed, led
to no indictments until May 21, 2001, when Del Ponte, aggressively pursuing the
new Yugoslav government to extradite Milosevic and other alleged war criminals,
and apparently feeling a need to demonstrate her even-handedness, belatedly
indicted a Croatian military officer. (Prior to May 2001, only Serbs had been
indicted for war crimes in the Krajina region.) Only Serbian leaders have been
charged with "genocide" and
top-down responsibility for the acts of subordinates. Numerous mass
killings by Bosnian Muslims--including imported mujahedeen whose specialty was
beheading civilian victims--and by the Croatian army and paramilitaries, never
caused the Tribunal to use the word genocide or to attribute responsibility to
Croatian president Tudjman or Bosnian leader Izetbegovic. And during her
pretended look at NATO crimes, Del Ponte considered only the responsibility of
NATO pilots and their immediate commanders, not the NATO decision-makers who
decided to target the civilian infrastructure and population. The double
standard here is dramatic. 8. Judicial Malpractice—Analogies With Soviet Practice in 1936-
1937. Anybody reading Not Guilty: Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into
the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky in the Moscow Trials (1938), written by
a group chaired by John Dewey, can only be struck by the frequent parallels
between Soviet and Tribunal principles and
court procedure. The commission stressed the public relations function
of the Moscow trials (393) and the ‘prearranged scheme’ and plan to prove that
a single bad man (Trotsky) was guilty (19, 388). The commission argued that
there was no real effort to establish truth, but merely to prove guilt (xxi,
21). It stressed the self-interest of the accusers (25). As regards specific
procedure, the commission noted the scanting of the rights of the accused and
defense (21), the dependence on accusations by those with a special interest
(25), the absence of documentary evidence backing up accusations and the
frequent use of documents that don't prove anything relevant (29). The
commission also stressed the failure to provide context for statements (325),
the failure to call important witnesses (30), and the failure to explore
contradictions in the accusations (12, 322). All of these charges are applicable
to the work of the Tribunal. As noted above, the public relations function of
the Tribunal is clear and even acknowledged, as is its aggressive pursuit of
the bad man guilty beforehand of genocide while allegedly trying to create a
‘Greater Serbia.’ Also clear is the limited search for truth, as well as the
self-interest of the NATO accusers. As regards judicial procedure,
the Tribunal is openly prosecutor friendly, oriented to ‘victims’ justice,’ and
it gets money from the United States and Soros specifically allocated for the
prosecution. The first Tribunal prosecutor, Richard Goldstone, stated that ‘The
victims of the Yugoslav wars want legal vengeance,’ and the victims ‘should
decide what is appropriate.’ And Goldstone never doubted that he knew which
groups were victims and had a right to demand vengeance. As Diana Johnstone
points out, “A ‘victim-centered’ justice is extremely favorable to the
prosecution and unfavorable to the defense.” Furthermore, “a victim-centered
justice creates its own victims: those who are unjustly accused and who cannot
be properly defended because fair and thorough defense may be rejected as an insult
to the victims.” (Deception and Self-Deception, Pluto, forthcoming).
Under this system in the Tribunal, the defense has been given short shrift
financially and in status and rights. Furthermore, the detailed
procedures are highly reminiscent of the Moscow trials. As in Moscow, there is
a failure to separate prosecution and judge, confessions and hearsay evidence
are acceptable, secret witnesses not subject to cross-examination are used
regularly, confessions are presumed to be free and voluntary unless the
contrary is established by the prisoner, there is no right to bail and a speedy
trial, there is double jeopardy in allowing the prosecutor to appeal an
acquittal and obtain a conviction on second try, there is no independent appeal
body, and conspiracy claims are common and (as in one case) ‘lack of evidence
can in fact be proof of conspiracy.’ The Tribunal also changes its rules at its
convenience, and is even proud of these tricks: ‘The Tribunal does not need to
shackle itself with restrictive rules which have developed out of the ancient
trial-by-jury system.’ Finally, the Tribunal uses ‘sealed indictments’ that its
NATO enforcers can use to seize some unsuspecting victim for delivery to the
Hague, again a throwback to Moscow methods. John Laughland has described the
Tribunal as ‘a rogue court with rigged rules’ (Times [London], June 17,
1999). 9. Purchase/Capture and
Indictment of Milosevic. Del Ponte and the Tribunal put great weight on getting
Milosevic to the Hague, to cap their service to NATO. In doing so they trampled
on the rule of law in Yugoslavia—a constitutional court order had denied
extradition—and they humiliated the newly elected President Kostunica, who had
pledged to deal with any Milosevic law violations under Yugoslav law. Del Ponte
and the Tribunal had been quite willing to let Croatia try its war criminals,
but not Yugoslavia, even after its ouster of Milosevic and installation of a
pro-Western regime. In order to gain control of
Milosevic, the Tribunal made a secret deal with Zoran Djindjic, the prime
minister of Serbia, who arranged for the abduction and extradition in exchange
for aid money, some $1.3 billion. In short the Tribunal and West bribed an
official of Yugoslavia to violate its laws. Thereafter, Djindjic found that his
bribe partners had misled him--to his annoyance, ‘suddenly we were informed
that [of the first installment of 300 million Euros]...225 million Euros were
being withheld for outstanding debts, [so]...the dying man gets the medicine,
once he is dead’ (Der Spiegel, June 16, 2001). As noted earlier,
kidnapping is standard Tribunal practice, usually linked to seizures under ‘sealed
indictments.’ Back in 1996, after Bosnian Serb General Djordje Djukic had been
seized by Sarajevo authorities, in violation of the Dayton accord, he was
illegally detained and interrogated by the Tribunal while dying of cancer, in a
hope of getting him to incriminate high Serb leaders. (Then chief prosecutor
Richard Goldstone thanked the Bosnian government for their illegal seizure, and
proceeded to rearrange the rules so as to be able to hold Djukic until close to
his death, illegally.) With Milosevic in the Hague the
stage was set for the final Tribunal service to its masters. However, Del Ponte
realizing that the actual indictment was thin, that Operation Horseshoe
had been shown to be a NATO propaganda fabrication, that 11,000-500,000 people
had not been murdered (some 3,000 bodies had been recovered from all sides),
decided to enlarge it to put the onus of killings in Bosnia and Croatia on the
head of the bad man. The new charge once again violated Western judicial norms:
a fundamental principle of extradition law is that a defendant may not be tried
for a crime other than the one for which he was originally sent for trial. But
it was once again a fine analogue to the Moscow scheme of fitting the villain
into a ‘historical connection’ of villainy, while the other active participants
in the historical events (Tudjman, Izetbegovic, Albright, Clinton) are
vindicated by the staged trial. Forecasting the Outcome of the
Milosevic Trial It is almost certain that
Milosevic will be found guilty, because the Tribunal is a creation and servant
of the NATO powers, has served NATO faithfully up to this moment, and will
surely not let it down here when vindication of the NATO war is at stake. It
has demonstrated repeatedly that traditional Western judicial standards will
not stand in the way of serving its political ends. It would be easy to parade
before a court the many Serb victims of the NATO bombing, of Croatia’s Gospic
massacre of September 1991 or the ethnic cleansing of Krajina in 1995, or of
numerous Oric and mujahedeen massacres in Bosnia in the years 1992-95. And as
much evidence of high level responsibility for these killings as will be
mustered for the Milosevic case could be offered for the criminality of
Clinton, Tudjman and Izetbegovic (among others). But that could only have
happened if the Serbs had been victorious and needed a ‘judicial’ vindication
of THEIR war. Losers must suffer victor’s justice. However, it is likely that
Milosevic will not be found guilty of all 66 charges against him, but only
enough to keep him in prison indefinitely and thereby vindicate the NATO war.
The throwing out of some of the charges will demonstrate the unbiased character
of the Tribunal! Marlise Simons in the New York Times recently cited the
dismissal of charges against two Croatians as showing that the Tribunal is not
biased (‘An Unexpected Reversal Of War-Crimes Convictions,’ NYT, Oct. 29,
2001). Nobody had told poor Simons that Croatia is a NATO friend and that the
Serbs are the enemy! Simons will surely find the elimination of some of the
Milosevic charges equally telling of Tribunal integrity! Despite the overwhelming
politicization and abuse of judicial process that has characterized the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY, or Tribunal)
from its inception, the Western New Humanitarians (David Rieff, Michael
Ignatieff, et al.) and mainstream media have taken its work as entirely
principled and truth- and justice-seeking. Demonization, an intense focus on
worthy victims, and an automatic acceptance of official perspectives, quickly
creates a consensus ‘truth’ that is protected by repetition and an avoidance of
incompatible information. Everybody can then repeat the established line, and
anybody who contests it becomes an ‘apologist for Milosevic.’ New Humanitarians on Victors’
Justice Several dozen New Humanitarians
have played a major role in selling the official line. They have uniformly
accepted the ICTY as a legitimate judicial body dispensing justice. For Aryeh
Neier, president of the Open Society Institute (funded by Soros), establishing
the Tribunal was ‘the most important step by the United Nations to protect
human rights since it adopted the Universal Declaration.’ The claim that the
Tribunal is a ‘tool of the U.S.’ he dismisses as unworthy of refutation (WP,
May 5, 1998; NYRB, March 8, 2001). Neither Neier nor any of the New
Humanitarians discuss the significance of the Tribunal’s NATO-power
origination, purpose, funding, and staffing; its less than stellar adherence to
western legal standards; or its service as NATO’s public relations arm. Their
assumption of the benevolent purposes of NATO’s leaders and of the unique
villainy of NATO targets precludes critical analysis. Michael Ignatieff says that
‘The great virtue of legal proceedings is that their evidentiary rules confer
legitimacy on otherwise contestable facts,’ but he never examines the
evidentiary rules of the Tribunal or evaluates the criticisms made of them; he
knows a priori that it does not dispense ‘victor’s justice’ (Harpers,
March 1997; NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, May 31, 2000). Apart from
expressing approval, neither Ignatieff nor his comrades discuss the Tribunal’s
indictment of Milosevic on May 22, 1999, while NATO was bombing Serbia; this
remarkable politicization of an alleged judicial body did not bother the New
Humanitarians, nor did the Tribunal’s refusal even to investigate the many
claims of NATO law violations. Yale law professor Ruth Wedgwood, who
misleadingly calls Del Ponte the ‘internationally appointed prosecutor of war
crimes,’ praises Del Ponte’s report in which she declines even to open an
investigation as ‘carefully done’—see the analysis of this travesty in Part
1—resting on ‘emerging’ standards of law, and recognizing that ‘there is
uncertainty and indistinctness in targets’ in
a ‘humanitarian intervention’ (Fox News, June 16, 2000). In short,
having taken sides, no rationalization is too absurd; the asserted moral ends
justify the means. In fact, the politicization of
the Tribunal serves the New Humanitarians well. They regularly cite its
findings as definitive confirmation of what they want to prove in their
campaigning. For David Reiff, the Tribunal indictments of Karadzic and Mladic FOR
GENOCIDE (his emphasis) show what a determined West could have done at any
time to bring justice to the Balkans (Slaughterhouse, 1996). For Ian Williams,
Carla Del Ponte’s estimate of probable killings in Kosovo is the final
authority that ‘should have put questions concerning the death toll to rest’
(Knight-Ridder/Tribune, Nov. 23, 1999). Rieff points out that national
sovereignty no longer protects human rights abusers, ‘as Slobodan Milosevic
learned when at the height of the Kosovo conflict, he was indicted for war
crimes by an international tribunal at the Hague’ (World Policy Journal,
Summer 2000). Rieff takes it for
granted that this indictment was carried out by a dispenser of justice--its
public relations service to NATO during the NATO bombing of Serbia is
unmentioned, perhaps never even strikes this war enthusiast and propagandist. Mainstream Media: A
Prosecutor’s Dream Team The preeminent feature of
media coverage of the Tribunal has been their uncritical following of the U.S.
official and Tribunal prosecutor lead in reporting and interpreting the
Tribunal’s work. They simply take Tribunal actions, usually the indictment or
seizure of some preferred (Serb) villain, report the prosecutor’s charges in
detail and without challenge, provide no critical historical context, and never
analyse the selectivity in choice of villain or the political context of the
Tribunal’s work. From the beginning the
media have never asked basic questions: Does the Security Council have a legal
right to establish a judicial body like the tribunal? Do the funding, staffing,
and police service of NATO entail NATO influence or control? Do the dominant
members of the Security Council, who also dominate NATO, have political goals
that might compromise the judicial efforts of a Tribunal? Instead of addressing these
questions the media have simply assumed that justice was being served, with the
benevolent NATO properly, perhaps belatedly, trying to bring ‘another Hitler’
to justice. But such assumptions violate the principles of objectivity whose
use supposedly differentiates a free from a totalitarian press. It will not do
to say that ‘in this case’ the truth was obvious, because the truth should
always be kept open to question-- and the media have repeatedly gotten on
similar bandwagons of ‘obvious’ truth that ex post turned out to be untrue (the
KGB- Bulgarian connection to the shooting of the Pope in 1981, the Soviets’
deliberate shooting down of Korean civilian airliner 007 in 1983, the latter
later admitted by the New York Times to have been ‘The Lie That Was Not
Shot Down’ [editorial, Jan. 18, 1988]). Exempting NATO The media occasionally
touch upon the problem areas, but they fail acknowledge their relevance and
importance, and instead of building on the challenging information they quickly
move on. Jamie Shea's NATO press conference statement of May 17, 1999, that
NATO had no worries about prosecution by the Tribunal because the NATO powers
finance the Tribunal and the prosecutor does only ‘what we allow her to,’ was
entirely ignored by the U.S. mainstream media, despite its clear assertion of
Tribunal subservience to external political control. On National Public Radio the
issue of whether NATO could be prosecuted for war crimes came up on All
Things Considered (March 24, 2000), but the program dealt only with U.S.
officials’ annoyance at the question, and the resultant possible straining of
relations between the United States and the Tribunal. U.S. officials pointed
out that the Tribunal ‘depends heavily on the United States for funding,
personnel, and the collection of evidence,’ and that raising the question of
NATO crimes had led to U.S. authorities already ‘putting bureaucratic obstacles
in the way of Tribunal requests.’ With only U.S., NATO and Tribunal officials
commenting on the issue, its scope was narrow, and the NPR did not ask what
kind of justice results from a judiciary so dependent on an interested power. This same bias pervaded the
coverage of Del Ponte’s June 2000 decision to exonerate NATO from war crimes
charges without even opening an investigation. The major New York Times
article on this decision was entitled ‘Kosovo Inquiry Confirms U.S. Fears of
War Crimes Court’ (Steven Lee Myers, Jan. 3, 2000). In keeping with its title,
the article did not discuss the evidence of NATO war crimes, which Canadian law
professor Michael Mandel presented to Del Ponte in three large volumes, nor
does it examine the basis on which Del Ponte refused to investigate as laid out
in the Final Report to the Prosecutor by the Committee Established to Review
the NATO Bombing Campaign (OTP Report). The article focuses instead on
theoretical U.S. vulnerability to war crimes charges. An A.P. report from the
Hague (‘U.N. Court Examines NATO's Yugoslavia War,’ NYT, Dec. 29, 1999) notes
that even if evidence of NATO law violations was found, ‘it is questionable
whether Ms. Del Ponte...would go so far as to issue any indictments. The
handling of the report is a delicate matter for the tribunal, which depends on
the military alliance to arrest and hand over suspects.’ But there is no
suggestion that this dependence compromises the judicial character of the
tribunal. Even more explicit in NATO-friendly framing is A.P.’s January 4,
2000 report ‘White House Blasts Kosovo Inquiry,’ which features ‘Washington’s
patience’ being exhausted at these Tribunal provocations, its view that an
inquiry would be ‘completely unjustified’ (White House spokesman), the awkward
position of Del Ponte in trying to avoid charges of pro-NATO bias, and a number
of citations to NATO spokespersons on NATO's innocence—but not a word on the
charges against NATO and the supporting evidence. Charles Trueheart in the Washington
Post did quote Michael Mandel making a general case against NATO (‘Taking
NATO to Court, Tribunal Reviews Professors’ Charging That Alliance Committed War
Crimes,’ Jan. 20, 2000), while giving NATO and the prosecutor equal space and
the last word. Trueheart cites NATO officials saying ‘they had been assured by
Ms. Del Ponte that she would not carry the exercise far,’ and that assurance
was fulfilled. The media’s coverage of the
NATO ‘inquiry’ and exoneration comprised a few back page articles, far less
coverage than given indictments of even low-level Serbs. The media never
compared the speed with which charges were made that served NATO, based on
NATO-supplied information, with the inability to decide the NATO case for many
months despite massive information in the public domain (summarized in Mandel’s
three-volume dossier). The fact that Milosevic was indicted for ‘crimes against
humanity’ based on 375 deaths, whereas according to the OTP Report ‘there is
simply no evidence of the necessary crime base’ with 500 NATO-caused deaths,
failed to attract the media’s attention.
There was not a single citation by the media to the report used by the
prosecutor, which relied on NATO press releases as authoritative sources and
gives solid evidence of pro-NATO bias, as demonstrated by Mandel (see Part 1).
The reporters were too lazy and biased to examine this readily available
document. Media & Tribunal NATO
Service: 1 The Racak ‘Massacre’ By January 1999, the United
States and NATO were ready to attack Yugoslavia, and the United States was
looking for a casus belli. The death of some 40-45 Albanians in the Racak area
on January 15 was therefore greeted happily in Washington. Many questions have
been raised about this incident: the Serbs had invited both OSCE monitors and
journalists to witness their assault on this KLA stronghold, A.P. photographers
were on the scene, and French reporter Christophe Chatelet, who arrived in the
village after the fighting, found the site calm, OSCE observers helping some
elderly people but telling Chatelet that nothing important had happened. There
were no signs of a massacre. After the report of a massacre, Chatelet and
Figaro reporter Renaud Giraud insisted on seeing the A.P. photographers’ tapes
of the day’s events, which again showed nothing supporting the claim of a
massacre. After the KLA reoccupied the
village, the next morning 40 bodies were on display, and U.S. officials
immediately claimed a massacre, and Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour rushed to
proclaim a war crime. The U.S. media also rushed to give the incident intense
and indignant coverage. The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles
Times, Time and Newsweek supplied 40 often lengthy articles over the
next ten days. All regurgitated U.S., NATO, and Albanian claims of a slaughter
of civilians. For Steven Erlanger, Milosevic ‘has thrown down the gauntlet to
the West’ by organizing a massacre (NYT, Jan. 21, 1999). Erlanger and his
colleagues never mentioned the findings of the French journalists who were on
the scene, looked at the A.P. tapes, and expressed serious doubts in Le Figaro
and Le Monde. The U.S. reporters failed to question the A.P. photographers
present at Racak on January 15 and whose documentation of the events there have
since been kept under wraps. They did not interview the OSCE observers who were
at Racak by invitation that day, even after U.S. and OSCE official William
Walker admitted that the observers had not witnessed a massacre (Watson, LAT,
Jan. 20, 1999). They never asked why the Serbs had failed to remove the bodies,
but left them for Walker to find and put to work for NATO. The U.S. media claimed that the
massacre was an embarrassment to U.S. officials and NATO--e.g., ‘The Serb
dictator understands well that NATO has little appetite for involvement in
another Balkan conflict’ (WP, ed., Jan. 20, 1999). However, British journalist
Allan Little quoted Madeleine Albright as saying to National Security Adviser
Sandy Berger, after hearing of the alleged massacre, ‘Spring has come early’
(‘How NATO was sucked into the Kosovo conflict,’ Sunday Telegraph
[London], Feb. 27, 2000). William Walker, the OSCE
official who had hastened to the scene and claimed an atrocity, not only had a
conflict of interest as a U.S. representative, he was a Reagan era apologist
for Salvadoran army atrocities. Although the European press frequently
mentioned his bias and European officials’ annoyance at his compromised
behavior as head of the OSCE observer mission, the U.S. media took at face
value his stance of being ‘visibly shaken’ at the Racak death scene (e.g., Guy
Dinmore, WP, Jan. 17, 1999), and never mentioned his conflict of interest or
tainted record. Although the Jesuit Order had publicly opposed Walker’s
nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Panama, ‘based on his alleged complicity in
the November 1989 assassination of [six] Jesuit priests in El Salvador’ (Inter
Press Service, June 28, 1993), Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times said
only that ‘he was chief of the U.S. Embassy’s political section in El Salvador
[and] ambassador from 1988 to 1992’ (LAT, Jan. 20, 1999); and for Jane Perlez,
he was merely ‘a seasoned diplomat’ (NYT, Jan. 17, 1999). The bodies at Racak were
quickly subjected to a forensic examination by Serb and Belarus specialists, in
coordination with a Finnish team sent
by the European Union. Professor Dusan Dunjic, of the Institute of Forensic
Medicine in Belgrade, who was one of the investigating team, says that 37 of
the 40 bodies showed traces of gunpowder on the hands, indicating that before
death the individuals had handled firearms; that the bullet wounds were in
different parts and sides of the bodies and had been inflicted from different
directions; and that although in civilian dress, many had identical black
trousers and other clothing designed for long wear out-of-doors (The (Ab)use
of Forensic Medicine,
www.suc.org/politics/kosovo/documents/Dunjic0499.html). The U.S. media never
talked with Dunjic or his colleagues, and relied only on the frequently
ambiguous statements of the head of the Finnish delegation, Dr. Helen Ranta,
who was a dentist and not a forensic expert. Her most often quoted words were
that Racak was ‘a crime against humanity.’ She continued by saying that ‘all
killings’ are crimes against humanity. This follow up statement,which made the
first statement meaningless, was never quoted (e.g., Carlotta Gall, ‘Serbs’
Killing of 40 Albanians Ruled [sic: this was a mere press conference statement
of Ranta] a Crime Against Humanity,’ NYT, March 18, 1999). The Finnish study of the
massacre has never been made public, which suggests that it fails to support
the official story. The U.S. media have not found this secrecy worth
mentioning. In January 2001 three of the Finnish experts published their
findings in Forensic Science International (J. Raino, K. Lalu and A. Penttila, Independent
forensic autopsies in an armed conflict: investigation of the victims from
Racak, Kosovo, 2001). Although lacking in explicit conclusions, the article
made clear that the bodies had been shot from many different directions as
Dudjic had stated, and suggested doubts about a massacre. Deutsche
Presse-Agentur’s article summarizing the report is titled Finnish experts
find no evidence of Serb massacre of Albanians (Jan. 17, 2001). No major
U.S. publication ever mentioned this study, despite their prior intense focus
on Racak. They had done their duty earlier, and if this might be another Lie
That Wasn’t Shot Down, they were not about to admit that. In Louise Arbour’s
indictment of Milosevic, the Racak massacre is the only pre-bombing charge. The
media, having raised not a single doubt about Racak, naturally never questioned
it as a basis for the indictment. When Arbour had sought to join William Walker
at Racak, the media’s sole preoccupation then was Milosevic’s denial of entry
to Arbour and threat to expel Walker. Paul Watson quoted James Rubin on the
unacceptability of ‘the Serbs interfering with monitors bravely trying to do
their work’ (LAT, Jan. 19, 1999). Milosevic had the strange notion that Walker
and Arbour had a political agenda in which he was the target. Serving on the
same team as Walker and Arbour, the media never hinted at this possibility. Media and Tribunal Service: (2)
The Arkan Indictment; Arkan Versus Nasir Oric On March 31, 1999, a week after
NATO began bombing Yugoslavia, Tribunal prosecutor Louise Arbour announced the
indictment of Serb paramilitary leader Arkan, which had been secretly issued in
September 1997. The timing was alleged by Arbour to be based on the desire to
put on notice anyone who ‘might retain his services or obey his orders.’
Marlise Simons and Charles Trueheart in the NYT and WP both reported the
Tribunal explanation (April 1, 1999), and NATO’s ‘welcoming’ the indictment,
but neither pointed out that the rationale was silly, nor did they hint at the
public relations service to NATO in focusing public attention on Serb evil. There were 11 articles on the
Arkan indictment in my five media sample in the ten days after March 31, more
than double the number on the refusal of the Tribunal even to investigate NATO
war crimes. It is enlightening also to contrast the media’s treatment of Arkan
and Nasir Oric, the Bosnian Muslim paramilitary killer, who had bragged to
Western journalists about his slaughter of Serbs in and around Srebrenica, and
who was at least Arkan’s equal as a mass murderer of civilians. But the West
supported the Bosnian Muslims, so Oric was never indicted by the Tribunal and
the media coverage of this criminal was negligible. During the period from
January 1, 1992 through December 31, 1996, Arkan was mentioned 150 times in my
media sample, 60 times in the New York Times. During the same period
Nasir Oric was mentioned only three times, not once in the New York Times.
Equally interesting, while Arkan was always described with adjectives like
‘notorious’ and ‘monstrous’ and nouns like ‘massacres’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’
(Charles Trueheart, WP, Feb. 1, 1999), on the rare occasions when Oric was
mentioned those words were missing. Thus, John Pomfret, although noting that
Oric’s ‘war trophies’ included videotapes of ‘burned Serb houses and headless
Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap,’ describes Oric only as
‘the toughest guy in town’ and ‘a lion in his den’ (WP, Feb. 16, 1994). No
invidious language for a killer on our side and not indicted by the
Tribunal! Media and Tribunal Service: (3)
The Milosevic Indictment With NATO’s bombing of Serbian
military forces in Kosovo not yielding an early surrender, NATO started to bomb
the civilian infrastructure of Serbia. These attacks were contrary to the laws
of war and were producing growing criticism even within the NATO countries.
Into this public-relations breach stepped Louise Arbour and the Tribunal, with
a patched together indictment of Milosevic and four other high Yugoslav
officials, publicly announced on May 27, 1999. In an outstanding example of
parallel media propaganda service, not a single news or opinion piece in the 32
published in my media sample during the ten days after May 27, even noted, let
alone criticized, that the Tribunal was gearing its work to accommodate NATO’s
PR need, although several did mention that it did seem to justify NATO’s war,
and several quoted Albright as saying the same thing. Many articles focused on
whether the indictments might hamper ongoing peace negotiations, but not one
questioned the appropriateness of a supposed judicial body issuing indictments
that would have immediate political consequences. Apart from the three or four
citing Serb and Russian opinion, no article criticized Arbour, who was
portrayed as a gallant believer in justice. In a later accolade to Arbour,
Marlise Simons allowed Arbour to state her reason for indicting Milosevic in
May—‘we might miss out’ on getting him as a result of a peace deal--but Simons
did not mention that there might be an alternative view, and she spoke only of
the indictment as ‘now seen as a tribute to the tribunal’s firmness’ (‘Proud
but Concerned, Tribunal Prosecutor Leaves,’ NYT, Sept. 15, 1999). In many
articles Arbour was described as in frequent conflict with NATO, which had been
allegedly dragging its feet in apprehending the villains that Tribunal justice
had indicted. Arbour’s statement accompanying the indictment, that indicted
individuals are ‘entitled to the presumption of innocence until they are
convicted,’ was immediately contradicted by her remark that the current
indictment ‘raises serious questions about their suitability to be guarantors
of any deal.’ These statements, which effectively declared Milosevic guilty by
indictment before conviction, were never cited by the media. The media regularly noted that
Arbour depended on classified NATO evidence for the indictments, but they never
pointed out that this evidence had not been independently confirmed by the
Tribunal, or that its supplier had a conflict of interest. The media, like NATO
and Arbour, knew in advance that they were dealing once again with ‘another
Hitler’ so that the sole question was efficiently bringing him to book—there
was no concern about niceties like due process and conflict of interest. Thus,
in contrast with the media’s treatment of the charges against NATO, here the
media offered voluminous and uncritical summaries of the charges, with gory
details, along with half-baked and error-laden ‘background’ (see Part 3). Apart
from a few articles that gave brief contrary views from Belgrade and Moscow,
the only dissent allowed was that the Tribunal’s action had been too slow! Media & Tribunal NATO
Service (4): Seizure of Milosevic When the Tribunal organized the
kidnapping of Milosevic to The Hague, once again the media and Tribunal worked
harmoniously in NATO’s service. The media treated this process intensively and
as a triumph of justice, epitomized by the title of Time Magazine’s
article ‘Bagging the Butcher,’ and Newsweek’s reference to Milosevic as
‘our postmodern Eichmann’ (both April
9, 2001). The media prejudged the case, with vast assurance and matching
indignation, parroting the lines taken by the Tribunal prosecution, themselves
identical with the position taken by Mrs. Albright and her associates. Milosevic was spirited away
secretly in defiance of the wishes of the relatively popular President of
Yugoslavia, Vojislav Kostunica, and an order of the Constitutional Court, by a
leader (Zoran Djindjic) who, while ‘pro-American,’ had ‘fairly low popularity
ratings’ (Jeffrey Smith, WP, June 30, 2001). It was treated as a romantic
escapade, with Djindjic the brave hero. That this kidnapping was done under
financial pressure from the United States and other donor nations was viewed as
entirely reasonable. None of my major media sample reported Djindjic’s anger
when he discovered that most of the donor money from selling Milosevic went to
liquidating Yugoslavia’s foreign debts! A few articles noted that
forcing the extradition in the face of Yugoslav law and a court order might not
help Yugoslavia recognize the importance of the rule of law. A number noted that the extradition was
strongly opposed by many in Yugoslavia and might create political turmoil and
destabilize the fragile new democratic government, but this view too was
exceptional. None of the media noted and reflected on the fact that Madeleine
Albright had earlier explained that it would be inappropriate to pressure the
Indonesian government to seek war crimes trials against Indonesian war
criminals because it might destabilize the new, fragile government of that
country. Media & Tribunal NATO
Service 5) Expanded Indictment In The Hague Milosevic found
himself facing an expanded indictment, that now included his alleged
responsibility for Serb crimes in Bosnia and Croatia. John Laughland has
pointed out that this expansion ‘is in direct contradiction to one of the most
fundamental principles of customary extradition law, namely that a defendant
may not be tried for a crime other than the one for which he was originally
sent for trial’ (‘Victors’ Justice,’ The Spectator [London], Feb. 9,
2002]). This point was never made in the major U.S. media. Laughland notes also that, as
the expanded indictments cover matters now seven to ten years old, which had
produced no indictments earlier, ‘It seems obvious that these last-minute
indictments over Croatia and Bosnia were issued to cover up the weakness of the
Kosovo indictment. And the judges have connived in this’ (ibid.) The U.S.
mainstream media have never made these points either. Prosecutor Del Ponte openly admits that,
despite the age of those earlier events, she is busy collecting data for the
new charges, thereby acknowledging that indictments precede evidence, not vice
versa as in a genuine court. This abuse replicates Arbour’s in May 1999 when
she rushed to indict based on unverified evidence from a party to the conflict
(NATO), eager for a propaganda boost. Now, as in May 1999, the U.S. mainstream
media don’t notice. Media and Tribunal NATO
Service: (6) The Trial The Hague trial of Milosevic is
a show trial, like the Moscow trials of 1936-1937, with a demonized villain on
stage whose certain conviction will vindicate the NATO war and interventions.
After this service, the Tribunal can be dissolved, and the United States is now
urging its near-term liquidation. Toronto lawyer Edward L.
Greenspan writes in Canada’s National Post (March 13) that ‘The first
two minutes of the Milosevic trial told me all I needed to know. This is a
lynching.’ Greenspan points out that in her opening statement prosecutor Del
Ponte claimed to be working ‘on behalf of the international community and in
the name of the member states of the UN’—in Greenspan’s words Prosecutor for
the Universe. And Judge Richard May didn’t object, probably because ‘he
actually believes her. May knows what the world expects of him and this trial.’
Greenspan also asks: how can justice be done in a court presided over by a
NATO-country judge, and especially one who ‘clearly reviles Milosevic’? Greenspan points out further
that, as Milosevic has opted to defend himself, and is not very sophisticated
in cross-examination and court-room practice, a fair judge would lean over
backwards to help him—but May constantly presses Milosevic to be quick and not
to bully witnesses, although bullying and pressure are, as Greenspan stresses,
common, acceptable, and important courtroom practices. Milosevic is also at an
informational disadvantage. An incarcerated individual, with some links to his
home country, versus NATO. The recent arrest of U.S. diplomat (and CIA official)
John David Neighbor along with Serbia’s deputy prime minister Momcilo Perisic,
apparently involved a U.S. effort to obtain secret documents that would help
the Tribunal prosecutor link Milosevic to war crimes in Bosnia (‘Political
tension brews in Belgrade over spying row,’ Agence France Presse, March
19, 2002). The U.S. media, however, never acknowlege an informational and
resource imbalance. They have even suggested that Milosevic may have an unfair
informational edge via associates back home, as compared with poor NATO and the
Tribunal, who complain of the foot-dragging of Yugoslav officials in producing
incriminating evidence. No mention is made of the new dependence of
Milosevic-free Yugoslavia on financial aid from the NATO powers, and the leverage
this gives for compelling the turning over of suspects, potential witnesses,
and information, in further arm-twisting operations like the one employed in
forcing the extradition of Milosevic. May allows prosecution
witnesses to testify at length about personal experiences, usually without
supportive and verifiable evidence, and even to recite hearsay experiences. In
Mahmut Bakali’s testimony (February 18, 2002), the witness cited what a local
Serb official claimed to have heard that Milosevic might have said about
Kosovo—twice-removed hearsay—without judicial interference. The media did not
notice or object. In his opening
presentation Milosevic showed the court some gruesome videotapes of Serb
victims of NATO bombing. The media do not ask why Milosevic’s evidence is less
proof of war crimes and genocide by Clinton and Blair than the current Tribunal
witnesses prove Milosevic guilt. That comparison would show both political
selectivity and the essential irrelevance of this kind of evidence, except to
show that war is ugly and--for the purposes of this trial—to produce a desired
moral environment that will sustain a conviction. When Marlise Simons interviewed
and wrote about Carla Del Ponte, who claims to ‘represent the victims’ (‘On War
Criminals’ Trail, An Unflagging Hunter,’ NYT, Feb. 9, 2002), Simons did not ask
her: what about the Serb victims in Bosnia, Croatia, and those massively
‘ethnically cleansed’ in NATO-occupied Kosovo? Why does the ‘unflagging hunter’
not fulfil her legal obligation and go after NATO’s war criminals? Simons
avoided such questions, in this interview and in her numerous articles in the New
York Times, just as her colleagues failed to ask about the ‘evidence’ that
the KGB and Bulgarians were behind the shooting of the Pope in 1981, or did not
pursue the ‘lie that wasn’t shot down’ regarding the Soviet downing of Korean
airliner 007. Her job is to go with the flow of propaganda that, as NATO
demands and the Tribunal implements, has targeted Milosevic as the latest
villain, whose conviction will demonstrate Western justice, brought to the
world by the rulers of the New World Order.
|