3-22-06, 10:38 am
(Author’s Note: in German we say 'dead-sure' when we mean foolproof or cocksure.)
This is the right moment to ask questions about how prisoners are treated who are in the hands of the Tribunal. It also needs to be mentioned that NATO forces do not act at all gingerly when they are attempting to detain tribunal suspects. There have been at least four cases where suspects and even innocent people have lost their lives at the hands of the NATO military forces sent to apprehend them.
After Milosevic's supposed heart attack, the western powers and other forces behind the tribunal can close another file. There is no need any more to proclaim a sentence that had been prepared long before. And it is definitely in the interests of the US administration as well as of the NATO strategists that the bourgeois media are shedding false tears. Western European papers now say that 'the biggest war crimes' cannot be avenged any more. They portray Milosevic as the 'gravedigger of Yugoslavia' or as a 'warmonger.'
The Hague Tribunal is not legally empowered to impose death sentences. Over the course of the Milosevic judicial process it became more and more clear that the judges, blessed by the Pentagon an NATO, were having great difficulty finding concrete evidence of guilt on the part of Serbian military and political figures that would even minimally accord with the sustained howls of the media bloodhounds. One can only suppose that the death of suspects by heart attack or by 'suicide' would appear as an elegant solution to their quandary, especially when the trials are grinding on for years with no end in sight.
The question needs to be asked about how far the Tribunal and its employees are responsible for the protection of the health of those imprisoned. How and why do suicides and deaths occur in such a prison? Apparently the those being tried or awaiting trial and sentencing fear the conditions in the prison itself even more than a possible sentence.
Another point of interest is the fact that up to this point only Serbs have been imprisoned and accused of war crimes – with the exception of a single Croatian ex-general. We are not in a position to evaluate the degree of guilt of these people, but attention needs to be drawn to the fact that Croatians, Bosnians and Kosovarians who were definitely responsible for military actions and mass uprootings of people are not even on the wanted lists of the Tribunal. There was, for example, the nationalist and late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, who died a free man, the notorious anti-Communist and Bosnian ex-president Alija Izetbegovic (who fought side-by-side with German fascists during World War II), and Agim Cegu, the previous commander of the Kosovarian nationalist militia, the UCK, that was fostered by NATO and the US. Cegu was just recently named the Prime Minister of Kosovo – again with the support of the US and the European Union.
We have to ask if any of the politicians in Washington and in the West European capitals, who were responsible for over 500 civilian deaths during the NATO bombing of Belgrade alone and many other deaths elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, will ever be put on trial.
The Tribunal, in its present form, is not capable of fairly judging the recent history of Yugoslavia or the war in the Balkans. For this purpose a totally independent court of justice would be needed. But such a court is not imaginable as long as the USA, NATO and the EU presume to determine policy in the region, ignoring the real interests of the concerned populations. Therefore, the pressure on Belgrade and the Serbs will now be intensified. The US/NATO Tribunal at the Hague will continue to demand total compliance with its wishes, and it will also continue to smooth away any rough edges, by 'taking care' of those incarcerated in the most dead-sure prison of Europe, regardless of their degree of guilt.
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