Conquering Darkness

Louise Arbour, Chief Prosecutor of the International Tribunal for War Crimes in Former Yugoslavia, did not manage to convince her Belgrade contacts to begin cooperating more actively with the Tribunal, but she received suggestions that this attitude could soon change.

On Monday, January 9, Arbour flew in for a five-day visit to FR Yugoslavia, trying to break the ice between the Tribunal and the Belgrade authorities who, since the signing of the Dayton Agreement, are for all practical purposes standing still.  However, the first day of the visit was reserved for meetings with representatives of two non-government organizations: Natasa Kandic, whose Humanitarian Fund has for years now been busy amassing data on the braking of human rights on the territories of former Yugoslavia, and with Sava Strpac from the Veritas Documentation Center in Krajina, which gathers information on the suffering of Serbs in Croatia.

These two organizations have been cooperating already for some time with the Tribunal, but during talks with Strpac, misunderstanding arose.  Namely, Strpac was trying to get the Hague to take over jurisdiction over Serbs in Croatia who have been sentenced to long prison terms without any real evidence of having committed war crimes.  Thus Arbour found herself in a situation of having to explain that she, as a prosecutor, is not overly interested in concerning herself with people who are very likely innocent, and that she is far more interested in those who are guilty; still, she promised to apply diplomatic pressure on Croatia to release the individuals in question.

However, the main work was in meetings with Yugoslav officials, scheduled for Tuesday.  Namely, even though in Dayton Slobodan Milosevic committed to having his country cooperate with the Tribunal, in practice it happened that only two years ago the Tribunal had been permitted to open an office in Belgrade.  All other demands by the Hague, especially demands to the arrest and delivery of FR Yugoslavia citizens who are accused of war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, met with a pigheaded refusal by the regime, despite occasional significant pressures by the West.  At the same time, Belgrade officials continually kept pointing to their Constitution which forbids extradition of citizens of FRY, at the same time promising to judge our “criminals” in our country.  Both excuses are at best shaky: in the Tribunal Statute, as well as in attending resolutions of the Security Council, it is clearly written that the Tribunal is above any national jurisprudence, and that all countries are obligated to heed this fact; and the way in which our jurisprudence dealt with the case of the “Yellow Wasps” and Slobodan Misic Top could hardly testify for the ability of objective judging at home.

Armed with this argument, Ms. Arbour met with the Federal Justice Minister, Zoran Knezevic, Vice-President of the Federal Government (and Slobodan Milosevic’s private lawyer), Vlada Kutlesic, and Federal Public Prosecutor, Vukasin Jokanovic.  A meeting was also arranged with Zivadin Jovanovic, Minister of Foreign Affairs, but was canceled at the last minute “because the minister was occupied elsewhere”.  Even though on this occasion Yugoslav officials repeated the constitutional clause against extradition, two circumstances suggest that Belgrade and the Tribunal have broken the ice in several places.  The first one is the fact that Ms. Arbour was even received at all by a high number of high officials, whereby the period of nearly completely ignoring the Tribunal has ended.  It is even more important that during talks Ms. Arbour was not confronted with usual accusations that the Tribunal is an institution created for mudslinging against the Serbian people and its brightest hopes.  And finally, all mentioned representatives promised, after they listened to Ms. Arbour, that they would relate her attitudes to “a higher official”, i.e. Slobodan Milosevic.

In any case, it is clear that Milosevic’s policy of ignoring the Tribunal cannot hold water, and that there is no outer wall of sanctions which is directly connected to fulfilling obligations toward the Hague.  Namely, the Tribunal has lately managed to make significant progress among Serbia’s neighbors: first Croatian authorities convinced a list of their citizens to “voluntarily” travel to the Hague, and after the election of Milorad Dodik, things also began changing in Republika Srpska.  Recently Dodik announced the opening of the Tribunal’s offices in Banjaluka, at the same time promising that several Serbs accused of war crimes will voluntarily show up one of these days in the Hague.  Beside that, it can be expected that authorities in Podgorica (with whom Arbour is going to meet after this issue of VREME goes to press) will be more cooperative toward the Tribunal, more so than was the case while Momir Bulatovic was President.

All this offers good reason for the five Yugoslavs, whom the Tribunal accuses of war crimes, to begin seriously worrying, and those who have reason to believe that they are on Ms. Arbour’s secret list also have reason for concern.  Their time is slowly nearing.  Those who are lucky will most probably be gently persuaded to go voluntarily to the Hague.  The others could fall under the maxim uttered by Veselin Sljivancanin when he was asked what had happened to people from the hospital in Vukovar.  According to a statement by one of the witnesses, Sljivancanin said: “They disappeared into the dark in midday”.

On the List

The Hague Tribunal is presently seeking five individuals with Yugoslav citizenship: Mileta Mrksic, Officer of the former JNA, Veselin Sjlivancanin and Miroslav Radic, who are accused of being responsible for the execution of patients and staff at the hospital in Vukovar on the agricultural estate of Ovcar, shortly after it fell into Serb hands.  Only one of the three (Sljivancanin) is still on active duty and is presently in the Center for Higher Military Learning in Belgrade, while Mrksic and Radic have been demobilized.

The remaining two, publicly accused individuals are Slobodan Miljkovic “Lugar” and Dusko Sikirica (i.e. “Hatchet”), both for war crimes in Bosnia.  All of them, as is supposed, are still on the territory of FRY.