In the great
film with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton, the "Witness for
the Prosecution" appears in court and gives exactly the opposite
testimony from what was expected. You would not know it from our
media – which passed over the event in silence – but the same thing
happened at The Hague recently, in the most important war crimes
trial since Nuremberg, that of the former Yugoslav president,
Slobodan Milosevic. One of the prosecution's star witnesses said
precisely the opposite of what he was supposed to say, dealing what
seemed like a fatal blow to a prosecution case which was already
reeling from several previous blunders.
The
star witness in question was Rade Markovic, the former head of the
Yugoslav secret services. Before he appeared in the witness box, the
media universally hailed him as the insider who would finally give
the clinching testimony that Milosevic had personally ordered the
persecution of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. This is the
single issue which NATO uses to justify its otherwise illegal
attacks on Yugoslavia: without it, the moral justification for
NATO's war in 1999 completely disappears.
The
urge to hear Markovic's testimony was all the greater because the
prosecution's last "star witness" had been a severe embarrassment.
Ratomir Tanic had presented himself as another "insider", and had
claimed that he had actually been present when Milosevic gave the
genocidal order. Under cross-examination, however, Tanic was shown
to be an agent of the secret services of various Western countries,
and to be so unfamiliar with the corridors of power that he could
not even say what floor in the presidential palace Milosevic's
office had been on.
The
embarrassment over Tanic was equalled only by that caused when an
Albanian witness produced a list of names, which he alleged was of
Albanians whom the Serb police were to execute. On closer
examination, the list turned out to be a fake: the spelling mistakes
were so numerous that only an Albanian could have written
them.
Enter,
therefore, Radomir Markovic, the secret police chief who knew more
about what was going on in Yugoslavia than anyone else. But, in
painstakingly detailed testimony lasting nearly three hours, he told
the court that Milosevic had never ordered the expulsion of the
Albanian population of Kosovo; that the former president had
repeatedly issued instructions to the police and the army to respect
the laws of war, and to protect the civilian population, even if it
meant compromising the battle against Albanian terrorists; and that
the mass exodus of Albanians during the Nato bombing was caused not
by Serb forces but instead by the Kosovo Liberation Army itself,
which needed a constant flow of refugees to maintain the support of
Western public opinion for the Nato campaign.
"Did
you ever get any kind of report," Milosevic asked him,"or have you
ever heard of an order, to expel Albanians from Kosovo?" "No, I
never heard of such an order. Nobody ever ordered for Albanians from
Kosovo to be expelled," Markovic replied. "Did you receive any
information about any plan, suggestion or de facto influence that
Albanians were to be expelled?" asked Milosevic. Reply: "No, I never
heard of such a suggestion to expel Albanians from Kosovo." "At the
meetings you attended, is it true that completely the opposite is
said, namely that we always insisted that civilians be protected,
and that they not be hurt in the process of anti-terrorist
operations?" "Certainly," said the witness. "The task was not only
to protect Serbs but also Albanian civilians." "Is it not true that
we tried to persuade the flow of refugees to stay at home, and that
the army and police would protect them?" the former president asked.
"Yes, that was the instruction and those were the assignments." "Do
you know that the Kosovo Liberation Army told people to leave, and
to stage an exodus?" "Yes," said Markovic. "I am aware of
that."
The
media greeted this stunning evidence with complete silence. Indeed,
it even failed to report the most extraordinary assertion of all
made by Markovic, namely that he had effectively been tortured by
the new pro-Western authorities in Belgrade, in order to make him
testify against Milosevic. Markovic claimed that the new Minister of
the Interior in the Western-backed government in Belgrade had taken
him out to dinner and offered him release from prison – where he has
been incarcerated for over a year now – and a new identity in a
country of his choice, if only he would agree to testify against his
former boss at The Hague. As Slobodan Milosevic tried to point out
in his cross-examination – until he was interrupted by the judge,
that is – it clearly falls under the terms of the United Nations'
definition of "torture" to imprison someone in order to force them
to co-operate. Markovic also alleged that the Tribunal's own
prosecutors had falsified and embellished the written statement he
had given them.
These
were amazing allegations. With them, the whole prosecution case
seemed to crumble. But even more stunning was the reaction of the
British presiding judge, Sir Richard May. A judge is supposed to be
a neutral arbiter between the prosecution and the defence: May, by
contrast, has distinguished himself throughout the trial by his
belligerence towards Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence,
and in particular for his habit of interrupting Milosevic, even
sometimes switching off his microphone, whenever the former Yugoslav
leader's cross-examination shows up inconsistencies in a witness'
evidence.
As May
listened to Markovic, he tried desperately to stop him making these
allegations against the Prosecutors and their allies in Belgrade.
When Markovic began to describe his ordeal at the hands of the new
Yugoslav government, May silenced him, saying to Milosevic, "This
does not appear to have relevance to the evidence which the witness
has given here. We are not going to litigate here with what happened
to him (i.e. Markovic) in Yugoslavia when he was arrested." And when
Milosevic insisted that the Tribunal's own investigators had
falsified Markovic's written evidence, May interrupted him tartly by
saying, "That is not a comment which it is proper for you to make."
In Judge May's book, therefore, it is irrelevant if the prosecution
is lying, or if it is an accomplice to torture.
Judge
Richard May is no stranger to political activity, like the
prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, he is a committed Socialist: he stood as
a Labour Party candidate for Finchley in the general election in
1979, where his Conservative opponent was none other than Margaret
Thatcher. As a judge on the Midlands Circuit in the 1980s, he would
dine out on this story, for which he enjoyed the admiration of his
left-wing colleagues. But even this happy admission of political
bias could not have prepared anyone for the way he would react to
Markovic's shocking claims.
It
gets worse. The Tribunal's priorities now seem so distorted that
they see Milosevic's "political crime" of resisting NATO as worse
than the crimes of physically torturing people to death. On 31st
July, the Tribunal ordered the release from custody of a man called
Milojica Kos. Kos had served four years of a six-year sentence for
murder, torture and persecution as a guard at the notorious Omarska
camp in Bosnia, which was compared at the time to a Nazi
concentration camp. But the president of the Tribunal, Claude Jorda,
said that Kos would be released early because of "his wish to
reintegrate himself into society, his determination not to
re-offend, his irreproachable conduct in detention, his attachment
to his family, and the possibility of exercising a profession
again." No such tolerance will be shown to Milosevic.
These
events have provided spectacular proof of what critics have always
said – that the International Criminal Tribunal is a political
kangaroo court in the hands of the West. But political manipulation
can work both ways. Tony Blair has been a vigorous supporter of a
clone of the Yugoslav tribunal, the new International Criminal
Court. But why shouldn't the new court be as politicised as the
present one? Plenty of anti-Western countries, like Iran, Sudan and
Zimbabwe, have signed the new ICC treaty. If they decided to
prosecute Tony Blair for attacking Iraq, say, there is little to
stop them – especially since the ICC defines "aggression" as a war
crime. On his next trip abroad, therefore, Mr. Blair might be wise
to pack his toothbrush. |