Toronto Star
Milosevic trial up against clock
Snail's pace of high-visibility case questioned
Court wants eventual verdict to be seen as just
Court wants eventual verdict to be seen as just
Dec. 10, 2005. 01:00 AM
FEATURE WRITER
the Hague—When Slobodan Milosevic wakes up in the morning, he can make himself a coffee in his room, take a shower, and if he feels the need, book a massage with a local practitioner.
A doctor is on call for his chronic blood pressure problem, and a psychiatrist in case of emotional stress. He can socialize with like-minded residents — including recently arrested former Bosnian Serb paramilitary leader Milan Lukic — or practise the piano.
What the former Yugoslav dictator cannot do is walk free from the detention centre in the seaside spa suburb of The Hague, where he has been held during his nearly four-year trial on charges that include genocide.
Thanks to 64-year-old Milosevic's frequent health crises, he may have many more months in the comfortable quarters that have little in common with the squalid jails of his native Serbia.
Or, if the International Criminal Tribunal's trial chamber has its way, the process could be cut short, opening the way for him to be transported to a more permanent jail before the end of next year. After months of interruptions of the trial, the chamber is urging that the complex three-part case against Milosevic be split, so that war crimes charges relating to Kosovo would be separated from those of Bosnia and Croatia.
If that happened, the Kosovo case, which is largely complete, could be wound up as early as next spring.
If Milosevic were found innocent, he would remain in the holding facility until the next trial came up — an acquittal, analysts say, is unlikely.
He has rejected the separation bid. So has the prosecution team, a rare show of agreement over an event that has shaken the tribunal and given the cavernous stone building an air of crisis.
"We are absolutely opposed to severance," says Florence Hartmann, spokesperson for Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte. "We are convinced that there was a system behind Milosevic's actions. What he did in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia was part of a pattern, a joint criminal enterprise."
Milosevic scoffs at the charge, calling it a "phantom." But analysts say it is to his advantage to continue the complicated triple trial, knowing that proving him the mastermind of a multi-dimensional plot is more difficult than convicting him for the killings of ethnic Albanians in the independence-seeking Serbian province of Kosovo.
"If the trial is about Kosovo, Milosevic would be found guilty," says Caroline Fetscher, a Berlin-based Balkan expert and author of Srebrenica: a Trial, on the genocide case against a Bosnian Serb general held responsible for the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men during the Bosnia war.
"If they continue the trial as it is, Milosevic could be declared unfit, and the hope for justice would be over. So far, the trial has got out of hand, and it's like a flood with no dams in sight," Fetscher says.
The prosecutors see it differently. For them, the separation of the trial could mean no justice for Milosevic's alleged victims in Bosnia and Croatia, where some 250,000 people died in the war that destroyed former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s.
The tribunal's failure to bring its most famous case to conclusion has called its credibility into question, in spite of other successes. And, says Fetscher, "the bulk of the cases are handled very well, like the one on Srebrenica. But this is the most high-visibility case."
Ironically, the court's most serious problem rests not with a failure of justice but a determination to find a verdict that will be seen as just — above the suspicions of critics in Serbia and other countries who say it will only deliver biased "victor's justice."
Milosevic's Belgrade advisers have accused the prosecutors of lengthening the trial by expanding their case against him. Meanwhile, Bosnian critics complain that he has been given too much consideration for his health, and allowed to seize the agenda.
"Mr. Milosevic has asserted his right, which is recognized in all common law systems, to represent himself," says the court's spokesperson James Landale. "What has caused delay to the proceedings has been (his) underlying health condition, which has required careful monitoring and treatment."
From the start Milosevic rejected the court's authority to try him, refusing legal counsel as a gesture of non co-operation but agreeing to represent himself. A lawyer with no previous experience in criminal trials, he developed a badgering style that at times proved highly effective. But his lengthy, blustering political statements drew frequent rebuffs from the judges, who accused him of wasting valuable court time, and switched off his microphone.
A year ago he was briefly forced to accept a lawyer to act for him when doctors concluded his high blood pressure put him at risk of a heart attack.
The British lawyer appointed as counsel quickly resigned when Milosevic refused to speak to him, and defence witnesses failed to show up in his absence.
Since then his health has appeared worse than ever, and he is said to have shunned his medication. A Serbian legal adviser raised fears that he would not survive the trial. With a family history of depression and suicide, Milosevic has been under close surveillance.
As his health crises continue, the case has become the longest war crimes trial in history.
In early 2004, Richard May, the British presiding judge, also became seriously ill and died shortly after leaving the court.
Milosevic's defence has so far centred on war crimes charges in Kosovo, and he has used three-quarters of the court time allotted to him. He still has a massive case to answer for Bosnia and Croatia, including two counts of genocide in Bosnia. If the court refuses him more time, as he asks, it could be accused of political bias.
But the tribunal is up against the clock in more ways than one.
As an ad hoc body set up by the United Nations Security Council, it has a limited shelf life, and is meant to close its doors in 2010. Its cases should be finished two years earlier, to leave time for final appeals. Del Ponte's current term ends in 2007.
Meanwhile, the Milosevic case grinds on and there are 44 other war crimes cases still to be heard. Ten are currently on appeal, and 11 are awaiting decisions on whether to transfer them to courts in the former Yugoslavia.
The hectic pace of the tribunal has been largely lost on the media, focused on the glacially slow Milosevic trial. Since the first frantic days when reporters from around the world vied for a chance to view the Serbian strongman through the courtroom's thick bullet-proof glass, the tribunal has become a news backwater.
"This is not like Nuremberg, where each citizen felt he or she was watching their own history," says Hartmann. "It's the history of the Balkans, and the media will cover it only when something attracts their attention."
Since the tribunal began its work in 1993, Landale points out, 161 people have been charged with war crimes in former Yugoslavia, and 85 trials have been completed.
"Only seven indicted persons remain at large," he says — a list that includes most-wanted Bosnian Serb suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Both are reportedly hiding out in former Yugoslavia.
Judge Theodor Meron, the new American president of the tribunal, has insisted that the court keep its doors open until all of them are brought to the detention block where Milosevic now sits, awaiting his next day in court.
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`So far, the trial has got out of hand, and it's like a flood with no dams in sight' Caroline Fetscher, Balkan expert |
