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Saturday
30 June 2001 International
justice is also going on trial THE extradition of Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague was
hailed yesterday as the greatest triumph of international justice since the
Nuremberg trials. But it is also the greatest test for the future of war
crimes trials. Geoffrey Robertson, QC, who was involved in the failed attempt to
extradite Chile's former military dictator, Gen Augusto Pinochet, from
Britain, said: "This is as much a trial of international justice as it
is of Slobodan Milosevic." If the Milosevic trial is seen to be fair, he
said, it will propel the campaign to set up a permanent international court
to bring other bloodstained leaders to book. But the cause of international justice could suffer should the proceedings
be visibly flawed, for example if Milosevic is convicted on flimsy evidence
in a "victor's trial", or if he is acquitted despite compelling
evidence of guilt by "political" judges drawn from sympathetic
countries. Even the most elated campaigners for a wider system of
international justice know there is a long way to go before dictators lose
sleep. Richard Dicker, of Human Rights Watch in New York, said: "The fact
that Milosevic is in the dock today does not mean that tomorrow he will be
followed by Idi Amin, Mengistu, Milton Obote and Raoul Cedras. We have to be
realistic." Nevertheless, the arrival of Milosevic at The Hague will be a milestone in
the development of international law, a progression that has led from the
Geneva Conventions to the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, the
failed extradition of Pinochet and the conviction in Belgium
this month of two nuns involved
in the murder of 7,000 Rwandan Tutsi refugees. The immunity from prosecution of former heads of state, removed in
principle by the Law Lords in the Pinochet case, has now been visibly
stripped away. Moreover, one major criticism of the Yugoslav war crimes
tribunal has been removed: the court is no longer dealing with the small fry
of ethnic cleansing, but with the biggest fish. Established amid general scorn in 1993, the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has taken a life of its own. It has become
a factor in the politics of the Balkans. Those involved in the fighting in
Macedonia should beware. Having proved the importance of the special courts for Yugoslavia, and to
a lesser degree for Rwanda, the world's governments will come under stronger
pressure to establish the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).
Thirty-six countries have so far ratified the treaty to create it - more than
half the number required to bring it into existence. Britain says it will give priority to ratifying the treaty. But the United
States is likely to be hostile, fearing that US citizens could be prosecuted.
President Bush was among those who most insistently demanded the surrender of
Milosevic to The Hague. But he may yet repudiate the permanent war crimes
court. But Richard Goldstone, the South African judge who was the first
prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, had no doubts about the future. "The
long arm of international law is becoming stronger," he said. |