Slobodan Milosevic conducted his legal defense much as he did his political life: with bombast, bullying and belligerence. Observing Milosevic for weeks and weeks in The Hague in the first half of his four-year trial, it became quickly clear to me that he was undertaking a political offensive in the courtroom rather than presenting a rebuttal of the 66 charges he faced.
A recent article by Vlado Rajic in Vjesnik (“Leveling On the Part of Human Rights Defenders,” October 16, 2004) about Human Rights Watch’s report on domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro, misrepresents both the report and the actual state of war crimes prosecutions in Croatia.
On Sunday, June 27, voters in Serbia will choose a new president from two opposition politicians. The choice could not be starker: moderate Boris Tadic offers to build on the political legacy of the late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Tomislav Nikolic is an ultra-nationalist with close ties to Vojislav Seselj, currently in custody at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on war crimes charges.
Most critics of the Hague tribunal in Serbia share the view of command responsibility as a form of strict liability. They argue that command responsibility entails responsibility of a superior for the acts of his subordinates solely because of his position of authority. Such an interpretation of command responsibility, however, is erroneous. Command responsibility is not a form of strict liability.
In the territories that comprise the former Yugoslavia—notably Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia), and Kosovo—the failure of international and domestic efforts to promote the return of refugees and displaced persons has left substantially in place the wartime displacement of ethnic minorities.
Slobodan Milosevic conducted his legal defense much as he did his political life: with bombast, bullying and belligerence. Observing Milosevic for weeks and weeks in The Hague in the first half of his four-year trial, it became quickly clear to me that he was undertaking a political offensive in the courtroom rather than presenting a rebuttal of the 66 charges he faced.
A recent article by Vlado Rajic in Vjesnik (“Leveling On the Part of Human Rights Defenders,” October 16, 2004) about Human Rights Watch’s report on domestic war crimes trials in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia and Montenegro, misrepresents both the report and the actual state of war crimes prosecutions in Croatia.
On Sunday, June 27, voters in Serbia will choose a new president from two opposition politicians. The choice could not be starker: moderate Boris Tadic offers to build on the political legacy of the late Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Tomislav Nikolic is an ultra-nationalist with close ties to Vojislav Seselj, currently in custody at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on war crimes charges.
Most critics of the Hague tribunal in Serbia share the view of command responsibility as a form of strict liability. They argue that command responsibility entails responsibility of a superior for the acts of his subordinates solely because of his position of authority. Such an interpretation of command responsibility, however, is erroneous. Command responsibility is not a form of strict liability.
In the territories that comprise the former Yugoslavia—notably Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia), and Kosovo—the failure of international and domestic efforts to promote the return of refugees and displaced persons has left substantially in place the wartime displacement of ethnic minorities.