http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=30041&cid=56&p=23.07.2008
Voice of Russia
July 23, 2008
MOSCOW ACCUSES HAGUE-BASED TRIBUNAL OF DOUBLE
STANDARDS
Vyacheslav Solovyov
Moscow has again urged the International Tribunal for
Former Yugoslavia to renounce double standards and
bias.
The call came in a statement released by the Russian
Foreign Ministry following the arrest in Serbia of the
former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.
13 years ago, the tribunal indicted him in absentia
for military crimes during the war in
Bosnia-Herzegovina in the early 90s of the past
century.
It is no secret that neither Serbs, nor Bosnian
Muslims, nor Croatians spared each other during that
war.
Nevertheless, despite evidence of crimes committed by
each of the sides, there is only one defendant –
Radovan Karadzic.
The tribunal is notorious for its bias against Serbs.
Over more than a decade, about 100 Serbs and just 25
Croatians, 9 Bosnian Muslims and 8 Albanians have
stood trial on charges of war crimes in an obvious
attempt to hold the Serbs responsible for the events
in the Balkans.
While the Serbian government is receiving
congratulations from Washington and European capitals
on Mr. Karadzic's arrest, the majority of Serbs, most
of whom treat Mr. Karadzic as a hero, suspect Belgrade
of political bargaining.
This is how Borislav Milosevic, the brother of the
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic who died
in prison during a trial in the Hague, commented on
the issue:
"For a big part of the Serbian population, Radovan
Karadzic is a national hero and the Hague-based
tribunal is an anti-Serb court convicting Serbs only.
As the Russian Foreign Ministry has said recently,
this tribunal must be shut. It's been a tool to exert
pressure on Belgrade and our people."
The tribunal's former chief prosecutor Carla Del
Ponte, in her book titled "The Hunt: Me and My War
Criminals", published after her resignation,
acknowledged that evidence of severe crimes had often
been ignored if those crimes were committed by Bosnian
Muslims, Croatians or Kosovo Albanians.
For one, the tribunal turned a blind eye to the
abduction and killing of more than 300 Serbs by
Albanian militants in Kosovo and the subsequent sale
of their organs for transplant surgery.
No investigation into these facts has been launched.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
