http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-031906.htm
Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Center
FROM ACCUSER TO ACCUSED: NICO STEIJNEN
PREPARES THE WAY FOR CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS AGAINST KWON, BONOMY, AND ROBINSON IN
THE DUTCH COURTS
www.slobodan-milosevic.org
March 19, 2006
Written by: Andy
Wilcoxson
Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Center board member Nico Steijnen,
Slobodan Milosevic's attorney before the Dutch and International Courts, is
preparing the way for Dutch authorities to file criminal charges against the
Hague Tribunal's judges in the aftermath of President Milosevic's
death.
Steijnen holds that the judges willfully destroyed President
Milosevic's health by ignoring medical advice, and that they caused his death by
actively preventing him from obtaining vital medical care.
On February 4,
1985 the Kingdom of the Netherlands ratified the "Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment." The convention
entered into effect on Dutch soil on December 21, 1988.
Article 1 of the
convention bans "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or
mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining
from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act
he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or
intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at
the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or
other person acting in an official capacity."
Steijnen claims that forcing
Milosevic to suffer and die in prison, while life-saving medical care was being
offered by Russian physicians, is tantamount to torture causing death. As such
he argues that the tribunal, and specifically the trial judges, violated the
convention.
Officers of the Hague Tribunal have diplomatic immunity which
shields them from most criminal prosecution before the Dutch courts, but torture
- especially torture causing death - is a unique case.
Under the convention,
there is no diplomatic immunity for torturers. Steijnen cites the case of former
Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested in Great Britain on charges
of torture.
In 1998 the British authorities arrested Pinochet at the request
of Spanish prosecutors who had charged him with torture under the
convention.
In 1999 the United Kingdom's highest court ruled that Pinochet
could be extradited to Spain under the terms of the convention, but Pinochet's
failing health, coupled with the fact that he had only committed acts of torture
prior to the convention's adoption, led British authorities to return him to
Chile.
Article 4 of the convention states: "Each State Party shall ensure
that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall
apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which
constitutes complicity or participation in torture. 2. Each State Party shall
make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account
their grave nature."
Article 5.3 of the convention states that "[The]
Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance
with internal law."
Article 5.1 (A) of the convention holds that criminal
prosecution must be undertaken in a country "when the offences are committed in
any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered
in that State."
Article 6 obliges "any State Party in whose territory a
person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present
shall take him into custody or take other legal measures to ensure his presence.
The custody and other legal measures shall be as provided in the law of that
State but may be continued only for such time as is necessary to enable any
criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted."
According to Mr.
Steijnen, the convention supersedes diplomatic immunity which makes it binding
on the Dutch authorities to arrest and prosecute Mr. O-Gon Kwon, Mr. Patrick
Robinson, and Mr. Iain Bonomy for torture resulting in the death of Slobodan
Milosevic.
Should the Dutch authorities fail in their obligation to prosecute
these criminals, it is possible (in light of the Pinochet precedent) that
charges as well as international arrest warrants could be filed against the
three accused men by a third country, such as Russia or Belarus.
However, in
the event that the Dutch public prosecutor's office refuses to undertake
proceedings, Steijnen says his next step will be to file a complaint with the
Committee Against Torture in Geneva.
In addition to preparing criminal
proceedings against the judges, Mr. Steijnen is preparing malpractice litigation
against the doctors that the tribunal had treating Milosevic when he
died.
Steijnen intends to haul the doctors up in front of the disciplinary
board of the Dutch medical association. In particular he intends to hold Dr.
Donald Uges accountable for pseudo-medical remarks that he made in the media on
the occasion of President Milosevic's death.
Steijnen says he plans to be in
court this Wednesday filing perjury charges against the former Dutch foreign
minister Jozias van Aartsen, for lying in connection with testimony he gave
before Dutch courts regarding the 1999 NATO bombing of Radio-Television
Serbia.
Nico Steijnen is an unsung hero. He has been working for President
Milosevic for free for several years and he really deserves and needs all of our
support.
To help finance Mr. Steijnen's work please make a donation to the
Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Center at:
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/hague/donate.htm
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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DIC20060319&articleId=2137
STATEMENT OF TIPHAINE DICKSON, LEGAL
SPOKESPERSON OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE TO DEFEND SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC,
AT THE ICDSM PRESS CONFERENCE HELD AT THE BELAIR TULIP IN THE HAGUE,
NETHERLANDS, MARCH 14th, 2006. Tiphaine Dickson This press conference was initially planned
last week, to present a request signed by well-known jurists, including
the former Attorney General of the United States, Mr. Ramsey Clark, and
prominent political figures, including a member of the Russian Duma, the
Czech Parliament as well as the European Parliament, which was filed last
Friday with the Security Council of the United Nations as well as the
Appeals Chamber of the ICTY, to direct the latter institution to permit
President Milosevic to receive the specialized medical treatment his
well-known and longstanding medical condition required at the Bakoulev
Center in Moscow. It obviously pains me to have made this last
trip to The Hague without any hope that Slobodan Milosevics health will
ever be stabilized. What an indecent end to a disgraceful
process, starting on day one, when in a blaze of astonishing irony, the
president of Yugoslavia was indicted by this body for allegations of
crimes against Humanity in Kosovo, a claim backed by evidence so slender
and biased that it was inversely proportional to its political and indeed
its military charge. The bombing itselfall 78 days of itwas
executed in violation of international law, a classic case of aggression,
held by the Nuremberg Tribunal to be the supreme international crime in
that it holds within it the accumulated evil of all other war
crimes. That the NATO bombing was a violation of
international law was acknowledged by Wesley Clark, to the US weekly The
New Yorker, but that admission was deemed inadmissible before this
Security Council institution, the ICTY. Mr Milosevic was prevented from
raising General Clarks candid admission before this body, although it was
so obviously germane to his defense. NATO short-circuited the Security Council to
bomb, yet instrumentalized a Security Council body to indict President
Milosevic and kept bombing, as the Prosecutor announced that because of
the indictment of the President of the country being bombed in violation
of international law, the president, the reprentative of his people, was
no longer a suitable guarantor in any peace negotiations. Disgraceful from the start. And so it went, with President Milosevics
removal from then Yugoslavia, without as much as a court order to the
director of the Belgrade jail in which he was being held, and in violation
of a decision by Yugoslavias constitutional court. And it ground on, with every single request
for provisional release, based on his ill-health, denied. Was the presumption that President Milosevic
would abscond? Such a conclusion is preposterous, as in four years, he
made clear his tireless commitment to defending himself, and above all he
demonstrated his unrelenting passion for setting out the facts about the
dismemberment of Yugoslavia. His commitment to presenting his case, that
there were no Balkan wars but indeed one war, waged against Yugoslavia,
was evident for all to observe. This was most obvious when President
Milosevic was poised to begin his defense in late August 2004. His health
was better than it became in recent months, yet, incredibly, Dr. Falke,
the ICTY prison doctor, reported that Slobodan Milosevic would not have
the ability to represent himself in the proceedings against
him. Contrast this findinga matter of law, which
in any event, a medical practitioner is not entitled to determinewith the
trial Chambers subsequent findings questioning the necessity of
specialized medical care in Moscow. Contradictory positions with a common
thread: the violation of the rights of an accused person. That Pavle Strugar, accused before the ICTY,
may receive hip replacement surgerya minor procedurebased on the
guarantees of Montenegro, seems absurdly inconsistent with the denial of
complex vascular and cardiac care in a renowned specialized facility in
Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council. I can tell you that President Milosevic was
hoping that our letter to the Security Council and to the Trial Chamber
would be persuasive, and that this press conference could help him receive
treatment so that he could finish his defense without fear of a
hypertensive crisis or constant ringing in his ears. But that is not to be. Our hope is that the confidentiality of all
medical records, doctors notes, prescription protocols and records, as
well as test results be waived and be available for scrutiny and for
discussion, without exception. We will shortly be requesting that the
Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan, waive the civil and criminal
immunity of certain individuals who by systematic neglect, potential
medical malpractice, or worse, precipitated the death of a man, who even
in death, stands wrongfully accused of having been its cause. We hope, and are fully confident, that the
truth will
emerge.
