------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 15, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
WHY HAGUE COURT WANTS TO SILENCE MILOSEVIC By John Catalinotto The NATO-created International Crim inal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague took ominous new steps July 5 to restrict former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's right to represent himself. The ICTY used Milo sevic's real health problems as an excuse to justify depriving him of his rights. The following day the court ruled that his trial would resume on July 14, but that it would assign a cardiologist to monitor Milosevic's health in preparation for forcing him to accept assigned counsel. Milosevic has been imprisoned for three years in The Hague in a place where the Nazis held resistance fighters. For two years he cross- examined some 300 prosecution witnesses. He was about to begin his defense case. Though he was to be restricted to 150 days in court, the former president was prepared to present a powerful case exposing U.S. and NATO crimes in his country and exonerating himself and the Yugoslav people. Milosevic told the media and the court that he would never accept an appointed counsel and he insisted on continuing his own defense. "This illegal court is daring to judge biological and medical issues after they have proven incapable of judging legal and historical issues," he said. "This court is like the Inquisition." Madeleine Albright, who was U.S. secretary of state during the 1999 U.S.- NATO war against Yugoslavia, was seen in The Hague at the ICTY building on July 5. Albright is known as "the mother of the ICTY." Supporters of Milosevic believe her presence is connected with the court's decision to postpone the trial and its attempt to change the rules. Milosevic's long-time aide, Vladimir Krsljanin, said from Belgrade on July 5, "What we have seen at The Hague is the worst kind of political theater and legal outrage directed at the president. Slobo dan Milosevic was brought to trial while he was suffering bad health conditions. Despite our pleas and complaints and the petitions of medical experts to the ICTY, it refused our demands for more time for preparation and rest for President Milosevic. "First the court created conditions that worsened his health, and now they are using his ill health to justify stifling his presentation of his powerful defense case," said Krsljanin. CHANGING THE RULES The ICTY opened the prosecution case in February 2002 after a year of preparation. The well-funded and staffed court set its own rules for the proceedings. It allowed Milosevic to represent himself, as he insisted. At that time, the ICTY and the media presented the Milosevic case as "the trial of the century." That's when the prosecution hoped to use it as a show trial to convict the Yugoslav leader and blame him and the entire Serb people for the wars in the Balkans. Within the first month, however, Milosevic had so ably handled his political and legal presentation, and had so effectively cross-examined hostile witnesses, that many reporters had to admit the case against the Serb leader was weak to non-existent. Publicity on the case was damaging NATO's justification for the war. Throughout the two years of prosecution that ended last February, President Milosevic was plagued by high blood pressure and a heart ailment. Dozens of doctors pleaded for a more humane treatment of the president. The court delayed proceedings, but refused to release him from the harsh prison conditions or give him the medical care of his choice. Though prosecutors took a year to prepare their case and two to present it, the ICTY allowed Milosevic only 90 days to prepare his defense and was to allow only 150 days for him to present it. Any time there is a delay for his health, the court refuses to allow him access to any papers or books or to interview potential witnesses at leisure. He lost 51 of the 90 days preparation when he complained of bad health. As part of his defense case, Milosevic intended to call U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other NATO leaders as witnesses so he could charge them for the war crimes NATO committed against Yugoslavia. He also planned to call a number of political analysts and activists who have written, spoken and organized against U.S. and NATO intervention in the Balkans. Some of these potential witnesses participated in the Peoples Tribunal on Yugoslavia organized by the International Action Center (IAC) in 1999-2000. Faced with the embarrassment of a powerful political exposure of NATO and U.S. leaders, the ICTY, like a schoolyard bully who keeps getting beaten at his own game, decided to change the rules and refuse to allow Milosevic to defend himself. One potential witness was Sara Flounders, a co-director of the IAC and an editor of the IAC book, "Hidden Agenda: the U.S.-NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia." Flounders was scheduled to testify early. She met with Milosevic in The Hague on June 28. Flounders told Workers World that "The attempt to remove President Milo sevic as his own attorney is an admission of his innocence of the war crimes charges and of U.S. and NATO guilt in planning, executing and carrying out a 10-year war that broke up a strong and successful Yugoslav Federation into a half-dozen weak colonies and neo-colonies subservient to the United States and Western Europe. "Just as the weapons of mass destruction have never been found in Iraq," Flounders continued, "the charge of massacres, mass graves and genocide proved to be an utter fabrication in Kosovo. It is essential that President Milosevic have a full opportunity to expose NATO's war crimes, to defend Yugoslavia and to answer these charges against his government." IAC founder and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark made himself clear on the issue of Milosevic's right to defend himself: "President Milosevic chose to 'defend himself in person,' a fundamental human right recognized by the Inter national Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." Tiphaine Dickson, an attorney from Canada who is assisting the Inter national Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic, said, "Within the U.S., the Supreme Court has recognized this as a right under the Sixth Amend ment to the Constitution. To refuse to allow him this right would turn the already illegal ICTY hearings into a star-chamber proceeding." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
