Not so fast toward the EU?

'Our children must not be burdened by policies of the 1990s.'

So said Serbian President Boris Tadić a few days ago, while laying a wreath near Vukovar, Croatia, where Serb forces executed more than 200 hospital patients as part of a 3-month siege in which more than 1,000 Croats were killed, 5,000 civilians seized, and 22,000 non-Serbs expelled. (credit for Reuters photo)
Tadić said he had come

to pay respect to the victims, to say words of apology, to show regret and create a possibility for Serbia and Croatia to turn a new page.

Part of that post-atonement chapter, Serbia hopes, is European Union membership, so that Serbia no doubt welcomed subsequent EU and the U.S. State Department comments heralding the visit as a welcome step toward reconciliation.
But the move brings to mind the objection that Serge Brammertz (below right), Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, raised regarding any plan to allow EU admission while ICTY indictees like former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić remain at large. As we've posted, Brammertz has said:

Be sure to ask countries to support the tribunal. There is a tendency to think, 'Let's move on. Let's take the countries into the international community. We are saying, 'There can be no compromise. There can be no alternative to bringing the fugitives to justice.'

ICC reports Sudan's non-cooperation to Security Council

Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court has rendered a decision in the case of Prosecutor v. Harun and Ali Kushayb, informing the U.N. Security Council about Sudan's lack of cooperation in the proceedings.
The decision issued Tuesday was in response to the Prosecutor's April 19 request for a finding on Sudan's non-cooperation in executing warrants, issued by the Chamber 3 years earlier, for the arrest of former State Minister for the Interior Ahmad Muhammad Harun and militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, also known as Ali Kushayb. In these past 3 years, Sudan has refused to cooperate in efforts to deliver Harun, who faces 42 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and militia leader Ali Kushayb, who faces 50 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, to the Court. Moreover, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who himself is the subject of an ICC warrant for arrest (prior IntLawGrrls posts), has publicly denounced the proceedings and vowed never to turn a single Sudanese citizen over to the Court.
It is in this context that Pre-Trial Chamber I -- comprising Presiding Judge Sylvia Steiner (Brazil) (left) and Judges Sanji Mmasenono Monageng (Botswana) (below, near left) and Cuno Tarfusser (Italy) -- issued Tuesday's decision. It gave notice of Sudan's non-cooperation to the Security Council, which in Resolution 1593 (2005) had referred the situation in Sudan to the ICC.
While Sudan is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the Chamber noted that as a U.N. member state, Sudan is obligated under Article 25 of the U.N. Charter to comply with Resolution 1593 -- and that paragraph 2 of that resolution states that Sudan

shall cooperate fully with and provide any necessary assistance to the Court and the Prosecutor ....

In its order, the Chamber simply stated that its decision was to be transmitted to the Security Council so that the Council could

take any action it may deem appropriate.

While it remains to be seen how the Security Council will respond to the Chamber's decision, the Council has responded to reports of non-cooperation from international tribunals in the past. For example, in 1996, the Council condemned the Republic of Serbia's and Serbia and Montenegro's failure to execute arrest warrants against Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić after receiving a report from the President of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that referred to an ICTY Trial Chamber's finding that neither State was cooperating with the execution of the warrants. In its statement, the Security Council demanded full cooperation from the Republic of Serbia and Serbia and Montenegro. In July 2008, as we then posted, Serbian authorities finally arrested Karadžić.

One can only hope that the ICC need not wait 12 years for Sudan's cooperation on the warrants for Harun and Ali-Kushayb.

On November 14

On this day in ...

... 1995, Richard Goldstone, then the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, indicted 2 Bosnian Serb leaders on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes stemming from the massacre of Bosnian Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica. This indictment followed another, issued 3 months earlier, which had charged the same 2 men, Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić and and Gen. Ratko Mladić, with international crimes related to other aspects of the war in Bosnia. As we posted here and here, it took 13 years for the capture of Karadžić; his trial began last month despite his boycott (left) of the proceedings, which readers may follow via webcast here. Mladić remains a fugitive.

(Prior November 14 posts are here and here.)

News flash: Karadžić arrested

After more than a decade on the run, Radovan Karadžić has been arrested in Serbia.

Karadžić (below), the former President of Republika Srpska, the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic, was seized Monday night in Serbia, according to Serbian President Boris Tadić, "'in an action by the Serbian security services.'" Tadić added that the longtime fugitive then was brought into a Serbian courtroom, the BBC reported:

'Karadzic was brought to the investigative judge of the War Crimes Court in Belgrade, in accordance with the law on cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.'

As posted, Richard Goldstone, then the ICTY's Chief Prosecutor, indicted Karadžić and Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladić in 1995 on charges related to their supervisory role in atrocities committed during the Balkans War. The amended indictment, issued in 2000 and including a charge of genocide at Srebrenica, is here.

In a statement issued today, the current Chief Prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said:

This is a very important day for the victims who have waited for this arrest for over a decade. It is also an important day for international justice because it clearly demonstrates that nobody is beyond the reach of the law and that sooner or later all fugitives will be brought to justice.

Even as Karadžić now awaits likely transfer to the ICTY, Mladić remains at large.

On November 9, ...

... 1996, newly elected Bosnian Serb President, Biljana Plavšić dismissed Gen. Ratko Mladić, whom the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had indicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. She said in a televised statement "that international opposition to General Mladic had made it impossible for him to remain," the New York Times reported, adding, "The television is tightly controlled by the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic." Today, as posted, Plavšić (left) is serving an ICTY-imposed sentence. But co-indictees Karadžić and Mladić remain at-large fugitives from that mechanism of international criminal justice.

... 1953, 2 days after King Norodom Sihanouk returned from exile, self-imposed months earlier as a protest against colonial rule, Cambodia became independent from France.

On July 11, ...

... 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird 1st was published. Harper Lee's novel about the courage of Southern schoolgirl Scout, her father, attorney Atticus Finch, and his client, Tom Robinson. She was inspired in part by Scottsboro, the case that, as it moved back and forth between state judges and the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, became an international cause célèbre. Mockingbird itself has an international readership: it's known in Spanish as Matar a un ruiseñor, in Portuguese as O sol é para todos, in German as Wer die Nachtigall stört, and in French as Ne tirez pas sur l'oiseau moqueur. A French website gushes: "The truth is that, while situating her story in Alabama at a precise period of time, Harper Lee wrote a universal novel about childhood confronting prejudices, lying, bigotry, and evil."
... 1995, in the Bosnian town that the United Nations had declared a safe haven --Srebrenica -- Bosnian Serb troops overcame Dutch peacekeepers. The troops subsequently separated by gender the Bosnian Muslims who had sought refuge there, then killed at least 7,000 boys and men. Eventually the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia would find some commanders guilty of genocide in this worst massacre to befall Europe since World War II; however, Gen. Ratko Mladić to this day remains a fugitive from ICTY justice. As we've posted, moreover, this year the International Court of Justice declined to find Serbia responsible for the genocide.
... 2007 (today), the United Nations marks World Population Day. This year's theme is "Men at Work," helping with parenting and household tasks too often relegated wholly to women -- as depicted in this poster, also available with subtitles in English, French, Spanish, or Arabic.