International Justice

Appellate judges in the Hague reject Fatou Bensouda’s decision to close case into IDF’s 2010 takeover of Mavi Marmara, in which 10 violent pro-Hamas...

August 22, 2019 RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Lawyer Jessica Finelle and François Zimeray, additionally a lawyer and former French ambassador accountable for human rights,...

Soldiers could be shielded from legal action brought under the European Court of Human Rights in future conflicts, in a bid to protect troops from “vexatious” court claims.

A recent report by Andy Wilcoxson, who has been following the trials at the ICTY, states that the judgement in the Dr. Karadzic case, issued in March of this year, “exonerated” or cleared President Milosevic of the allegations made against him by the prosecution at the ICTY. However, the judgement contains other findings by these judges that muddy the waters and remind us that though they did accept certain favourable facts regarding Milosevic, their purpose was not to “clear” Milosevic but to convict Karadzic and so they used legitimate disagreements on strategy and tactics between Milosevic and Karadzic to diminish the role of Milosevic in this case and exaggerate the role of and belligerency of Karadzic.

The death of Slobodan Milosevic was clearly the only way out of the dilemma the NATO powers had put themselves in by charging him before the Hague tribunal. The propaganda against him was of an unprecedented scale. The trial was played in the press as one of the world’s great dramas, as world theatre in which an evil man would be made to answer for his crimes. But of course, there had been no crimes, except those of the NATO alliance, and the attempt to fabricate a case against him collapsed into farce.