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OPINION Is Karadžic innocent? 25 July 2008 Charles Crawford When Miloševic was abruptly transferred to the Hague Tribunal in June 2001 I dusted off my barristerial wig and sent a lively telegram to London from Belgrade on the theme "Is Miloševic Innocent?" My point was that linking Miloševic to the calamitous events in Bosnia and other non-Serbia parts of former Yugoslavia in a way capable of withstanding rigorous legal scrutiny would not be easy. There probably would not be clear documentary or other physical proof linking him as a Serbia leader directly to proven atrocities in Bosnia/Croatia. So to convict him at ICTY it would have to be proved beyond doubt that in some less explicit way he was 'responsible' for them - maybe he ordered lesser actions which, given the obvious circumstances, had to lead to such atrocities elsewhere, or at least he did not do all he might have done to stop them. Could be ... Tricky. Thus was it likely that Miloševic was directly responsible for the horrendous Srebrenica massacre? On the face of it, no - why would he have wanted something like this to happen when he knew it would provoke a huge international outcry against the Serb cause generally? Will Karadžic's guilt be easier to establish? Probably yes. Or not. He (unlike Miloševic) was (a) an openly influential figure in Bosnian Serb ranks and (b) actually in Bosnia as the conflict raged, meeting the media and genially denying any wrong doing. His operational responsibility over the Bosnian Serb forces was self-evidently higher, as was his operational leadership capacity to influence political events for the better - hence also higher his legal/moral responsibility for horrors occurring when (and because?) he did not do so. That said, for those very reasons of proximity he can (unlike Miloševic) attempt at his trial to drum up all sorts of arguments that for every given Bosnian Serb alleged war-crime he was acting closely in one way or the other with the 'international community' on the ground, in its various bungled efforts to bring peace to Bosnia. And (unlike Miloševic) he can point in detail to Bosniak/Muslim and Croat military and political decisions which (he might say) forced the Serbs into justifiable self-defence measures. Or he might dwell on the strange ways in which heavy weaponry found its way to the Bosniaks/Muslims during the conflict despite an international arms embargo, with various Western powers not exactly doing much to stop this. He might force the Tribunal to look hard at the political and moral events leading to the outbreak of hostilities in Bosnia, where the Izetbegovic Muslim tendency arguably played a highly irresponsible role. If someone else recklessly starts a fire, is your legal responsibility somehow diminished if you behave badly in the ensuing panic? And/or he could try to claim - and be able to show - that at different points senior international negotiators made him promises or otherwise deliberately and knowingly influenced his calculations in a way which is now highly embarrassing in some circles. In short, he has lots of options for creating a circus, with all this grimly complex history being pored over for years in excruciating detail. There will be no shortage of money for top-end legal defence teams, if he wants them. Or is there another option - that he is just worn out by it all, and plans quietly to plead guilty to all charges? Somehow I doubt it. Charles Crawford is a former British diplomat who served as ambassador in Sarajevo and Belgrade. __._,_.___
