My latest article on trial of Slobodan Milosevic was just posting as the news came from The Hague that the Inquisition decided to impose lawyers on the former Serbian president.
The decision was immediately hailed by the prosecution and the ICTY partisans, and bitterly protested by Milosevic.
According to AP, the decision was not unanimous, but the identity of the dissenter was not revealed. It was likely O-Gon Kwon, the Korean who is not entirely in the pocket of Imperial interests, unlike the presiding “judge” Patrick Robinson of Jamaica and UK’s Iain Bonomy, (replacement for the late and unlamented Richard May).
It is almost impossible to fully explain how much of a travesty this trial has been, but I’ll try a recap, anyway:
– The initial indictment was clearly political, coming in the midst of NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia.
– It was amended when Milosevic was seized and brought to The Hague (illegally), to include the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, ten years after the fact.
– The prosecution used witnesses who lied under oath in exchange for immunity and financial rewards; “expert witnesses” in its own employ to “prove” the existence of propaganda chimeras of its own making; and even witnesses who were coerced into giving false statements (e.g. Rade Markovic).
– the “judges” frequently interrupted Milosevic’s cross-examinations and forbid lines of questioning as “political” and “irrelevant,” even though the entire indictment is political; then they allowed Wesley Clark, a bona fide war criminal (commander of the 1999 NATO attack), to grandstand for a day, long after the Kosovo phase was supposedly finished, and even take a break to get references from Bill Clinton at one point; his testimony was then vetted by the US government prior to release of the transcript.
– the “judges” rejected out of hand a well-reasoned motion from the monitors they themselves appointed (amici curiae) to drop several of the charges, completely accepting the prosecution’s claim that there was enough evidence for all of them – even though there is hardly evidence for any.
With this latest decision, ostensibly made to “end repeated trial delays” and safeguard Milosevic’s health (!), the ICTY has made it painfully obvious that it does not care for justice or procedure or fairness, only the pre-ordained verdict. Milosevic has played merry Hell with its farcical proceedings, exposing their witnesses as liars and exploding their nonsensical charges. Now that is’ finally his turn to start defending himself properly, they deny him that right. Disgusting. Then again, so is the whole “trial.”