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In
the great film with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton, the
"Witness for the Prosecution" appears in court and gives
exactly the opposite testimony from what was expected. You
would not know it from our media – which passed over the event
in silence – but the same thing happened at The Hague recently,
in the most important war crimes trial since Nuremberg, that of
the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. One of the
prosecution's star witnesses said precisely the opposite of what
he was supposed to say, dealing what seemed like a fatal blow
to a prosecution case which was already reeling from several previous
blunders.
The
star witness in question was Rade Markovic, the former head of
the Yugoslav secret services. Before he appeared in the
witness box, the media universally hailed him as the insider who
would finally give the clinching testimony that Milosevic had
personally ordered the persecution of the ethnic Albanian population
of Kosovo. This is the single issue which NATO uses to justify
its otherwise illegal attacks on Yugoslavia: without it, the moral
justification for NATO's war in 1999 completely disappears.
The
urge to hear Markovic's testimony was all the greater because
the prosecution's last "star witness" had been a severe embarrassment.
Ratomir Tanic had presented himself as another "insider", and
had claimed that he had actually been present when Milosevic gave
the genocidal order. Under cross-examination, however, Tanic
was shown to be an agent of the secret services of various Western
countries, and to be so unfamiliar with the corridors of power
that he could not even say what floor in the presidential palace
Milosevic's office had been on.
The
embarrassment over Tanic was equalled only by that caused when
an Albanian witness produced a list of names, which he alleged
was of Albanians whom the Serb police were to execute. On
closer examination, the list turned out to be a fake: the
spelling mistakes were so numerous that only an Albanian could
have written them.
Enter,
therefore, Radomir Markovic, the secret police chief who knew
more about what was going on in Yugoslavia than anyone else. But, in painstakingly detailed testimony lasting nearly three
hours, he told the court that Milosevic had never ordered the
expulsion of the Albanian population of Kosovo; that the former
president had repeatedly issued instructions to the police and
the army to respect the laws of war, and to protect
the civilian population, even if it meant compromising the battle
against Albanian terrorists; and that the mass exodus of
Albanians during the Nato bombing was caused not by Serb forces
but instead by the Kosovo Liberation Army itself, which needed
a constant flow of refugees to maintain the support of Western
public opinion for the Nato campaign.
"Did
you ever get any kind of report," Milosevic asked him,"or have
you ever heard of an order, to expel Albanians from Kosovo?" "No,
I never heard of such an order. Nobody ever ordered for
Albanians from Kosovo to be expelled," Markovic replied. "Did you receive any information about any plan, suggestion or
de facto influence that Albanians were to be expelled?" asked
Milosevic. Reply: "No, I never heard of such a suggestion
to expel Albanians from Kosovo." "At the meetings you attended,
is it true that completely the opposite is said, namely that we
always insisted that civilians be protected, and that they not
be hurt in the process of anti-terrorist operations?" "Certainly,"
said the witness. "The task was not only to protect Serbs but
also Albanian civilians." "Is it not true that we tried
to persuade the flow of refugees to stay at home, and that the
army and police would protect them?" the former president asked.
"Yes, that was the instruction and those were the assignments." "Do you know that the Kosovo Liberation Army told people to leave,
and to stage an exodus?" "Yes," said Markovic. "I am aware
of that."
The
media greeted this stunning evidence with complete silence. Indeed,
it even failed to report the most extraordinary assertion of all
made by Markovic, namely that he had effectively been tortured
by the new pro-Western authorities in Belgrade, in order to make
him testify against Milosevic. Markovic claimed that the
new Minister of the Interior in the Western-backed
government in Belgrade had taken him out to dinner and offered
him release from prison – where he has been incarcerated for over
a year now – and a new identity in a country of his choice, if
only he would agree to testify against his former boss at The
Hague. As Slobodan Milosevic tried to point out in his cross-examination
– until he was interrupted by the judge, that is – it clearly
falls under the terms of the United Nations' definition of "torture"
to imprison someone in order to force them to co-operate. Markovic also alleged that the Tribunal's own prosecutors had
falsified and embellished the written statement he had given them.
These
were amazing allegations. With them, the whole prosecution
case seemed to crumble. But even more stunning was the reaction
of the British presiding judge, Sir Richard May. A judge
is supposed to be a neutral arbiter between the prosecution and
the defence: May, by contrast, has distinguished himself
throughout the trial by his belligerence towards
Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, and in particular
for his habit of interrupting Milosevic, even sometimes switching
off his microphone, whenever the former Yugoslav leader's cross-examination
shows up inconsistencies in a witness' evidence.
As
May listened to Markovic, he tried desperately to stop him making
these allegations against the Prosecutors and their allies in
Belgrade. When Markovic began to describe his ordeal at
the hands of the new Yugoslav government, May silenced him, saying
to Milosevic, "This does not appear to have relevance to
the evidence which the witness has given here. We are not
going to litigate here with what happened to him (i.e. Markovic)
in Yugoslavia when he was arrested." And when Milosevic insisted
that the Tribunal's own investigators had falsified Markovic's
written evidence, May interrupted him tartly by saying, "That is not a comment which it is proper for you to make." In Judge May's book, therefore, it is irrelevant if the prosecution
is lying, or if it is an accomplice to torture.
Judge
Richard May is no stranger to political activity, like the prosecutor,
Geoffrey Nice, he is a committed Socialist: he stood as a Labour
Party candidate for Finchley in the general election in 1979,
where his Conservative opponent was none other than Margaret Thatcher.
As a judge on the Midlands Circuit in the 1980s, he would dine
out on this story, for which he enjoyed the admiration of his
left-wing colleagues. But even this happy admission of political
bias could not have prepared anyone for the way he would react
to Markovic's shocking claims.
It
gets worse. The Tribunal's priorities now seem so distorted
that they see Milosevic's "political crime" of resisting NATO
as worse than the crimes of physically torturing people to death. On 31st July, the Tribunal ordered the release from custody of
a man called Milojica Kos. Kos had served four years of a six-year
sentence for murder, torture and persecution as a guard at the
notorious Omarska camp in Bosnia, which was compared at the time
to a Nazi concentration camp. But the president of the Tribunal,
Claude Jorda, said that Kos would be released early because of
"his wish to reintegrate himself into society, his determination
not to re-offend, his irreproachable conduct in detention, his
attachment to his family, and the possibility of exercising a
profession again." No such tolerance will be shown to Milosevic.
These
events have provided spectacular proof of what critics have always
said – that the International Criminal Tribunal is a political
kangaroo court in the hands of the West. But political manipulation
can work both ways. Tony Blair has been a vigorous supporter of
a clone of the Yugoslav tribunal, the new International Criminal
Court. But why shouldn't the new court be as politicised as the
present one? Plenty of anti-Western countries, like Iran, Sudan
and Zimbabwe, have signed the new ICC treaty. If they decided
to prosecute Tony Blair for attacking Iraq, say, there is little
to stop them – especially since the ICC defines "aggression" as
a war crime. On his next trip abroad, therefore, Mr. Blair might
be wise to pack his toothbrush.
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