Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice

by John Laughland

-- A passionate critique of Milosevic's trial and the PR machine at the heart of international justice -- 'Study this story. . . . The truth is hard to find, but in John Laughland we are fortunate to have a man blessed with the freedom to seek all facts,

Genres: History, Politics, War

232 pages, Paperback

First published December 20, 2006

Reviews

[Christopher Rex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book should be read. That being said, it needs to be read in conjunction with other books about the Balkan Wars that go beyond the mainstream demonization of Serbia, which was based on falsified information and a complete distortion of the facts. If the evidence is scrutinized carefully, the Kosovo War waged by NATO was completely illegal and totally unjustified. Not surprisingly, the trial of Milosevic afterwards was also a mockery of the concept of "justice" and was little more than a show-trial to justify the illegal aggression towards Yugoslavia (and to lay the foundations for undermining sovereignty and justifying illegal wars of aggression in the future - Iraq being the most notable). The Security Council at the UN isn't democratic, so it is not surprising that the Criminal Tribunals it set up for Yugoslavia are completely distorted in favor of the prosecution as well. Basically, the ITCY was set up to find a "guilty" verdict and nothing else and its entire structure and procedures were aimed at that goal. There was/is zero concept of "innocent until proven guilty" in the ICTY and this book clearly points that out through meticulous research and scrutinization of trial transcripts and a plethora of other sources about the Balkan Wars.

The book gets a bit "slow" w/ the parts covering the legalities surrounding statutes, history and procedures, but they are absolutely necessary to understanding how the ICTY (and the entire concept of "international justice") is nothing more than a representation of the world's geopolitical power structure. The fact that the US does not recognize the ICJ in regards to prosecuting Americans, but will recognize it to prosecute its enemies is testament to that fact. Regardless, anyone seeking a greater understanding of the Trial of Milosevic should read this book. Anyone wanting to understand how the concept of "justice" can (and is) perverted should read this book. Anyone wanting to see how the world's powerful nations use the UN and its bodies to justify their own worldview should read this book.

As Bob Dylan once sang: "You couldn't help but feel ashamed to live in a land where Justice is a game"

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice (John Laughland, Pluto Press, London, Ann Arbor, USA, 2007)

Here we have a most complex story, namely, how the leaders of extremely powerful nations can undermine and eventually destroy the sovereignty of a smaller nation by political and militaristic means (and I am not referring to the current Putin or Bashar al-Assad wars).

When I say “how”, I mean exactly that. Don’t let that small word get lost in the sentence. This book is an explanation of how the interpretation of phrases such as “international judicial intervention”, “new intranationalism”, “new strategic concept”, and “unjust law” (to name a few) can be used to legitimize the aggressive actions of the most powerful leaders on earth against a smaller nation, in this case, Yugoslavia circa 1999.

Why is such a story important? Because within the description of Slobodan Milosevic’s trial is an idea that has slowly infiltrated the mind-set of despots, authoritarian regimes, and dictators world-wide, not to mention democratic leaders, already either drunk on power or just now sipping from the cup: “Might makes right”.

Witness Vladimir Putin’s invasion into Ukraine; Syrian/Arabic infiltration of lands previously occupied by Kurds; Donald Trump’s recent threats to bomb Mexico if re-elected President.

Now, I want to tell you there are a lot of details in this review which I found necessary to include because this was not an easy book to read and digest. Having said that, those who want to understand some of the complexities of Laughland’s arguments, who want certain details of why Yugoslavia was villified and bombed by NATO explained, should continue reading; those who only need the thimbleful outline, the thumbnail-sketch distillation of the book composed of a brief explanation can skip down to the last few paragraphs.

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What kind of logic is behind the thinking referred to in the opening paragraphs of this review? There is an unspoken maxim behind the philosophy of the Rule of Law that states that the creation, governance, and application of law is the inherent right of all soverign states. Therein, as Grotius aptly explained, is the basis of civilization. The laws of one nation are its own and may be subject to the criticism of, but not interference by, another nation. The rule of law in any state is subject to and maintained only by its sovereign. This has been the accepted view of how justice (as we now know it) is served since the reign of Hammurabi.

As nations evolve they are capable of forming powerful armies, navies, and air forces, and as those nations grow economically, the willingness to exert their might grows: “the longing to hurt, the cruel desire for revenge, the unappeased and unappeasable mind, the fierce spirit of rebellion, the lust of mastery [over others]” according to St Augustine, “are the things we are right to blame in war”.

Grotius, in The Law of War and Peace - his philosophical treatise on the individual rights and collective rights of the citizenry as a whole - quotes the Roman philosopher Seneca: “the most far-reaching reason for going to war… is the common tie of humanity”, in other words, the necessity of a sovereign state to protect its citizens from acts of aggression.

But what of the need to protect the oppressed within another sovereign nation? What conditions must be proven to be present in order to declare war - or engage in an act of war - on another sovereign country to protect/defend the oppressed within its borders? This book addresses that and another more pressing question: When should an allied group of nations who have banded together for the purpose of defence take aggressive action against another soverign state?

Such action was tried before: the book mentions “The Weapons of Mass Destruction” excuse under George H W Bush and the US covert involvement in the Contra War in Nicaragua under Ronald Reagan. But these were actions independent of any US agreement with an ally or the overt participation of another country. The thrust of this book addresses how NATO, originally insituted as a defense against Russian aggression during the Cold War, justified the bombing of a sovereign nation (in this case, Yugoslavia) under the guise of protecting the human rights of the Albanian minority, using “moral and humanitarian duty” as justification, even while that country had an active sitting head of state.

As I said at the beginning, this is a complex story.

The Foreward by former Attorney-General of the United States Ramsey Clark notes the one important fact that the book rests upon: That the United States’ then president Bill Clinton, his UN Ambassador Madeleine Allbright, Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleberger, General Wesley Clark, Secretary of Defence William Cohen, and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, among others, pressured the UN Security Council to create a legal entity with the power to prosecute under the rubric of International Law various leaders of Yugoslavia’ six provinces and specifically Slobodan Milosovic, the sitting president of that country, whom they accused of crimes against humanity.

Chapter 1 puts it in perspective. Using the Grotius example of our “ties to humanity” and then President Bill Clinton’s own “moral obligation” rule, NATO accused Milosevic of attacking ethnic (Muslim) Albanians and of “the worst program of ethnic cleansing (in Kosovo) and mass displacement of citizens since the Second World War”. This became the a rallying cry in the international press and the ultimate justification for NATO aggression led by American bombers and the eventual arrest of Milosevic after more than 90 days of bombing.

The author points out that Clinton’s “moral duty” to take such action against Yugoslavia under the rules of International Law did not fall under those rules: “The universality of international law does not necessarily imply universality of enforcement” (page 62). As well, Laughland cites a clause in “The Nuremberg Principles” that states “the interdiction of aggressive war [is] the supreme international crime… there is no greater violation of national sovereignty than to attack and invade another state” (page 64). In other words, countries should never attack another sovereign nation unless it is guilty of aggression towards another soverign nation. Only then can alliances form and an act of war be declared.

And yet: the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began in March and ceased in June while Milosevic was still the sitting president. UN Peacekeepers were sent to Kosovo and Pristina a month later (Milosevic would view the stationing of UN Peacekeepers as an occupation - exactly as Nasser viewed them in Egypt in March of 1957) but despite his objections he (Milosevic) would be arrested in October.

In his preamble to his criticism of the Milosevic prosecution Laughland talks a lot about the Nuremberg Principles (mentioned above) and the Nuremberg Trials. He refers to Nuremberg because many supporters of The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) - the commission set up to prosecute Milosevic by the United Nations Security Council - saw it as a natural extension of that tribunal that was established to prosecute Nazis. Laughland goes to great lengths to portray the establishment of the ICTY as exactly opposite: He pits the rules, justifications, and purpose of those prosecutions against the manner in which Milosevic was treated by the ICTY. The two major reasons for the bringing to justice of the 20 plus Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg were “the crime of causation of an unjustifiable war” (the invasion of Poland and France) and the oppression of “free peoples” in Germany, France, and Italy (as well as Poland). News of the systematic murder of millions of Jews came after the Nuremberg Court had been established. It was the unjustifiable invasion of peaceful countries by the Nazis itself that was the reason for the trials. The presiding judge, Justice Robert Jackson in his opening statement, announced that it was the first trial in history for “crimes against the peace of the world” - not a trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity or genocide - that would come later (noted on page 56). And yet the United States and Great Britain unashamedly dared to make such a comparison.

Laughland again quoting the Nuremberg Principles’ most salient point says: “The worst crime [the] leaders of one state can commit against another state is to violate its sovereignty by attacking it” (pg 65). Laughland proceeds from this statement to explain that Bill Clinton’s pressuring of NATO to bomb Yugoslavia was contary to the United Nations’ Charter and was done without approval of the UN Security Council. In other words, it was a “crime against peace”.

Throughout the rest of the introduction, Laughland lists the many false reports the world’s media outlets began releasing about mass executions, mass graves, and the mass exodus of Albanian, Bosnian, and Croation refugees as a result of Milosevic’s “secret campaign” to expand Serbian territory into Croatia and Bosnia. Milosevic maintained from the very beginning of his defence that that was untrue, that he had attempted to protect ethnic Albanians and allowed tens of thousands to take refuge in Serbia after being attacked by Christian militias in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia.

Many of these news reports of atrocities supposedly committed under Milosevic’s orders were used as reasons to arrest him for “war crimes” but were later found to be false, these accusations being made after the bombing campaign had already begun.

Have I mentioned the story is complex?

Milosevic Defends Himself

Students of International Law and Political Philosophy would find the minutiae of the arguments put forth by Laughland and Milosevic extremely interesting.

Laughland explains in detail how the previously established rules governing the formation of international courts and the treaties that dictate their conduct were ignored when the International ICTY was established. There are specific principles of the rules of common international law as defined in the Geneva Conventions that are required to be part of the raison d’etre for such a court. One such principle was that the United Nations requires all countries agreeing to form a tribunal to abide by the edict that governments follow and adhere to the right of sovereignty. This, of course, requires consent on the part of all signatories when such an international court is convened. This requirement was followed during The Nuremberg trials. It was specific and clear: “no international body can disregard the sovereignty of another nation unless that nation surrenders unconditionally in time of war”. Only then can the former leaders of a country be arrested and charged under the terms of the Geneva Convention for war crimes. What Laughland points out is that the ICTY interfered in the sovereign rights of Yugoslavia by searching out, arresting, and charging Milosevic who was still the sitting head of state, even after 2 months of what Laughland calls the illegal bombing of the country and the deaths of innocent citizens as a result of the bombing.

It was in the analysis of the process of how the ICTY was formed, the NATO bombing that disregarded the tenets of International Law (the right of sovereignty) and International Humanitarian Law, and the subsequent charges of crimes against humanity (that later proved to be untrue) that Milosevic characterized the Tribunal as “false”. Laughland argues that it was NATO that should have been ultimately charged with the crime of interfering with the sovereignty of an independent state, and that the arrest and trial of Milosevic was a travesty of justice created to deflect attention away from the NATO intrusion and interference into that county’s affairs.

From chapter 5 onwards Laughland illustrates how the ICTY bent, disregarded, and/or otherwise ignored the protocols of how International Tribunals are to be conducted, even creating its own laws in order to transcend existing precedents governing the conduct of prosecutors and the presentation of evidence during the trial, which was to become the longest international proceeding in history. Milosevic (who claimed the court failed to adequately address his deteriorating health during incarceration) died before a verdict could be arrived at. His defence (he refused a lawyer and represented himself) addressed all of the concerns Laughland details in his book, not the least of which was Milosevic’s right to question the most powerful leaders on earth in his defence - leaders who had pointed their finger and exclaimed j’accuse - but they refused to submit to Milosevic’s cross examination and the court refused to issue subpoenas to compel them to appear. Hence, the title of the book Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice.

So, having outlined the theme and thrust of the book, it is now up to me to research the footnotes, sources, witness accounts, and findings as presented by the prosecutors and compare these findings to Laughland’s accounts. Somewhere amid the 50,000 pages of transcript and 1.2 million documents entered into evidence, is the truth, but any analysis of the claim that the trial was not only illegal but farcical in nature (Laughland described the trial as “Kafkaesque”) will be almost impossible to prove due to the voluminous amount of paper submitted during the trial.

This massive amount of evidence presented and the length of time required to present it on the part of the tribunal seems truly absurd if the charges against Milosevic were actually true. Compared to Laughland’s succinct 193 page discussion (including former United States Attorney-General Ramsey Clark’s 6 page foreward admonishing the United Nations for allowing the ICTY to prosecute anything), the complexity of the Gordian knot consisting of witness testimony, legal documents, news reports, not to mention the premature death of the accused and the fact that the court would not subpoena the very people who testified to his guilt and later refused to be questioned in cross-examination, make the charges against Milosevic and the weight of the presented evidence and claims of Milosevic’s guilt spurious at best (in my opinion). There is one paragraph I will quote at length at the end of Chapter 3, from a letter about the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, written by Walter Rockler, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, that acts as the single sword-stroke that frees the truth and exposes the ICTY for what it really was:

“We [the NATO allies] have engaged in a flagrant military aggression… attacking a small country… primarily to demonstrate [that] we rule the world. The rationale that we are enforcing international morality, even if it were true, would not excuse the… widespread killing it entails [and] does not lessen the culpability of the authors of this aggression…” He continues: “…at Nuremberg the United States and Great Britain pressed [for] the prosecution of Nazi leaders for planning and initiating [such an] aggressive war.”

Laughland then concludes by saying NATO is guilty of exactly what the United States and Great Britain accused Milosevic of having done, and he resolves his argument at the end of the book by simply understating the whole affair as “poignant irony”.

For students of international politics and those interested in the history of eastern Europe post World War II, I would certainly recommend this book.

[Nickolai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Начиная читать книгу, думал, что она будет посвящена подробному описанию процесса над Милошевичем и демонстрации допущенных при этом нарушений. Но оказалось, что основной акцент автор делает на самих нарушениях, уделяя процессу второстепенное внимание. Книга очень познавательна, ярко показывает весь тот фарс, в который превратился суд над сербским лидером. Очень жаль, что такое возможно в нашем мире для того, кто действует с позиций силы.

[Natalie K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a FANTASTIC book. Review to come as soon as I organize my thoughts and notes.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather astonishing book. I admit to being rather uninformed about the events in the Balkans in the 1990s, but I had swallowed whole the UK media version of events. This book gives a different perspective, and whatever the rights and wrongs of the underlying events, the prosecution and trial itself - and even the establishment of the ICTY itself - appear to give rise to very grave concerns. I recommend this book.

[Trudy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I know why we didn't hear much about his trial. He certainly wrecked havoc in the Balkans and the courts.