On October 5

On this day in ...
... 2000 (10 years ago today), in what the BBC called a "relatively peaceful revolution," demonstrators "stormed the Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade" (right) and "ransacked" the building housing state broadcast channels. (credit for AP photo) The crowds were protesting the intention of Serb President Slobodan Milošević to remain in office after contested elections that many believed his opponent had won. Within a day after these demonstrators, Milošević had resigned from office; within a year, he was transferred to a detention center at The Hague; within 6 years, he had died while still on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

(Prior October 5 IntLawGrrls posts are here, here, and here.)

Farewell to a Legal Pioneer: Nancy Paterson

Nancy Paterson—one of the chief architects of the indictment against Slobodan Milošević—died a couple of weeks ago of ovarian cancer at the age of 56. I had the pleasure of working with Nancy at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) where she was a Team Legal Advisor.
Nancy was a woman who saw no gender boundaries. She reportedly played Little League in the 1960s on a boy’s team and then played basketball at University of Miami in Ohio. After graduating from Syracuse Law School, she made her way to the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan and worked under the legendary Robert Morganthau. During her eleven-year stint at the DA’s office, she worked primarily on child abuse and sex crimes cases and also helped to form one of the first special victim’s bureaus.
In the mid-1990s, she served on the U.N. Commission of Experts that investigated war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Balkans. The work of the Commission laid the groundwork for the establishment of the ICTY. Nancy joined the Office of the Prosecutor in 1994 (one of the first handful of staff) and co-authored the Kosovo indictment against Milošević, making him the first sitting head of state to be indicted by a modern international tribunal. (See prior posts here). This indictment was later extended to accuse Milošević of crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
After leaving the tribunal on the day the trial of Milošević began, Nancy worked on fraud issues with the World Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve.
She will be missed.

Her obituaries are available here: New York Times, Washington Post.
An interview with her in which she gives advice to law students is available here.

Write On! Trial of Slobodan Milosevic

(Write On! is an occasional item about notable calls for papers.) Three units at Indiana University, Bloomington -- the Maurer School of Law, the Russian and East European Institute, and the Center for Western European Studies-- are seeking papers from scholars of international criminal law, transitional justice, or the former Yugoslavia for a conference entitled "The Milosevic Trial: An Autopsy," to be held February 18-21, 2010. Papers should address issues related to the trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia of the former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic (below right) -- a trial that, as we've posted, ended with his death in 2005 -- or to the trial's impact on the former Yugoslavia, on international criminal law, or on transition justice. Paper topics should fall within the themes of conference:

The trial's significance and legacy are strongly contested; the conference will examine both the causes of the trial's termination and its implications for post-conflict justice. Drawing on major trial participants, experts on the former Yugoslavia, and international criminal law scholars who have written on the trial, the conference will address issues such as:
► the proper role of historical truth-telling in war crimes trials;
► measuring the impact of trials;
► prosecutorial and judicial strategy in designing trials; and
► access to trial archives.

Preliminary program and other details here. Deadline's soon: send a 500-word abstracts, a 200-word biography, and a c.v. by December 5, 2009, to tiwaters@indiana.edu. (N.B. One version of this call put the deadline as early as "November 31," so better to inquire if you've any questions.)

On April 23

On this day in ...
... 1999 (10 years ago today), NATO defended the overnight bombing of Serbia's state television station, asserting that the building was a legitimate target and a "'ministry of lies.'" (photo credit) The Belgrade bombardment, reported to have caused 10 deaths and 18 injuries, was said to have been appropriate for the reason that the station gave propaganda support to the militaristic endeavors of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Banković and Others v. Belgium and 16 Other Contracting States (1999), an application for relief filed by victims' survivors, was ruled inadmissible by the European Court of Human Rights. I've written about that decision in my article entitled Guantánamo.
... 2003, Cypriots were permitted to cross the "Green Line" that had separated the northern and southern portions of the island of Cyprus for nearly 3 decades. "The Turkish Cypriots announced ... that they were easing the restrictions to build confidence between the divided communities," the BBC reported. (map credit)

(Prior April 23 posts are here and here.)

On March 11

On this day in ...

... 1941, "immediately after receiving it from the Capitol," U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Act, by which "undisclosed quantities of war materials" were, The New York Times reported, immediately "to be transferred at once from the American Army and Navy to the British and the Greeks, to bolster these powers in their life-and-death struggle with the Axis." The Act, it is said here, served dual purposes of "meeting Great Britain’s deep need for supplies and allowing the United States to prepare for war while remaining officially neutral." Also provided was food, as illustrated in the December 1941 photo at left, which the U.S. Office of War Information captioned "Lend-Lease in Action: Vegetables for British Children." (credit)

.... 2006, 5 years after the deposed Serbian President (right) had been brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of genocides, crimes against humanity, and war crimes stemming from the Balkans wars of the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell at The Hague, Netherlands. (AP photo credit) The ICTY ordered the trial against the deceased terminated, without verdict, 3 days later.

(Prior March 11 posts are here and here.)

Defense counsel on "show trial" claims

First, my thanks to the IntLawGrrls for inviting me to be a guest blogger. I am glad to be a part of the blog’s ongoing discussion of timely and relevant international law topics.
As this blog and media around the world have reported, the former Bosnian Serb leader accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, Radovan Karadžić, has just been handed over to the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for prosecution. He has already declared that he would like to represent himself. In doing so, he may intend to follow in the footsteps of Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj, both of whom represented themselves and tried to turn the ICTY proceedings into a show for audiences back home. Karadžić is reportedly still considered a hero by some Serbs, with poems in his honor being recited at nationalist gatherings at Belgrade pubs. The prosecution at the ICTY is understandably concerned that, by representing himself in The Hague, Karadžić will do his best to politicize the proceedings and score points with his nationalist supporters.
Karadžić’s plan to represent himself, and the possibility that he will attempt to use the trial as a platform for political statements, feeds into a popular image of international criminal trials turned into a show by conniving defendants and their attorneys. In fact, the Milosevic and Seselj trials do not accurately represent the vast majority of international criminal trials. In most such trials, the defense does not attempt to politicize the proceedings. (credit for photo of ICTY session) Instead, they approach the process in much the same way as do defendants and their counsel in most ordinary domestic proceedings — refraining from political statements, and instead simply putting forward their best legal and factual defenses to the offenses charged. This is one of the main findings of my article on Defense Perspectives in Law and Politics in International Criminal Trials, 48 Va. J. Intl’l. L. 529 (2008).
My article addresses a larger, fundamental question about the purposes of international criminal trials:

Do international criminal trials serve primarily legal purposes, similar to the objectives of domestic trials, or do they serve primarily political purposes, such as helping communities heal and compiling an accurate record of the past?

The article examines this question through the perspectives of an overlooked, but important, participant in these trials—the defense attorney. Through personal interviews, scholarly articles, and case law, I analyze the attorneys' motivations, strategies, and tactics in representing defendants at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. In particular, I ask whether defense attorneys believe that international criminal trials serve primarily adjudicative or primarily political purposes.
The survey finds that defense attorneys believe that these trials are much farther from being constructed primarily to satisfy political purposes, and much nearer to being truly adjudicative proceedings whose crucial function is to separate the guilty from the innocent. Defense attorneys believe that a good number of their clients are innocent and that acquittals are possible. Their perceptions, I argue, are not merely inevitable products of the role they play, but are supported by an increasing number of acquittals, dismissals, and vigorous debates about liability doctrines and rules of procedure. Finally, and contrary to some perceptions, most defense attorneys do not view political statements or attacks as appropriate tactics in international criminal trials and instead focus on factual and legal challenges to the prosecution's case.
Even as international trials retain their unique political importance, the attitudes of those actually engaged in them reflect their character as primarily adjudicative proceedings. Importantly, as key players in the trials, defense attorneys not only reflect, but also influence the proceedings, shifting them toward the adjudicative model.

'Nuff said

(Occasional item taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes.)

Critics claim that Ocampo has imperiled peace negotiations -- but those negotiations were not progressing even before the ICC prosecutor named Bashir.

-- our colleague James C. O'Brien, a principal at The Albright Group, and Presidential Envoy for the Balkans during the Clinton Administration, in a Los Angeles Times op-ed comparing and contrasting this month's application for an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir (above left) by International Criminal Court Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo (IntLawGrrls posts above, here, here, and here) with the 1999 indictment of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (above right) by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Prosecutor Louise Arbour.

Prosecutorial Puzzler Answered

(Solution to today's Prosecutorial Puzzler above)

a. 4

b. Heads of state who've been prosecuted, other than Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, are:
(1) Charles Taylor (above left), indicted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone while he was the sitting President of Liberia. The Court, sitting specially at The Hague, is trying him now. Yesterday Chief Prosecutor Stephen Rapp said "that the case was in its fifth month of hearing the prosecution’s evidence, and could possibly wrap up 'within a year.'" (photo credit)
(2) Slobodan Milosevic (right), indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia while he was the incumbent President of Serbia. He was put on trial for genocide and other offenses, but died before any verdict could be rendered.
(3) Jean Kambanda (left), former Prime Minister of Rwanda. His 1998 plea of guilty to genocide, crimes against humanity, and related offense marked the 1st conviction of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
(4) Karl Dönitz (right). Though best known as Nazi Germany's top naval officer, Dönitz served as President for the 23 days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide and before the end of World War II in Europe. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted him of crimes against peace -- known today as aggression -- and crimes against humanity; he served 10 years in prison, then lived in Germany till his death by heart attack in 1980.

On June 3

On this day in ...
... 1753 (255 years ago today), in Montréal, Québec, Marie-Marguerite d'Youville (left), 51, who'd become the widowed mother of 3 before her 30th birthday, secured the permanent transfer of l'Hôpital Général de Montréal transferred permanently to the religious order she had founded a decade earlier -- the Sisters of Charity, better known as the "Grey Nuns."
... 1999, European Union envoy and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari announced that Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic had "accepted the terms of an international peace plan for Kosovo." The plan, which would require troop withdrawal, return of refugees, and "eventual autonomy of Kosovo within Yugoslavia,"had just been approved by Serbia's parliament.

On this day

On April 1, ...
... 2001, former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and taken to prison in Belgrade, ending a 36-hour standoff at his home. Within months, "after US pressure," he would be "was extradited to The Hague to face the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia." His trial there began in 2002, but in 2006 he died in his ICTY prison cell before any verdict was returned.
... 1983 (25 years ago today), tens of thousands of peace demonstrators "formed a human chain stretching 14 miles" along a route in southern England that "the protesters call 'Nuclear Valley.'" Organizing the event was the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, about which we've posted. (photo credit)

Au revoir (presque) à Louise Arbour

Louise Arbour will step down from her position as U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights on June 30, thus concluding her 1st term in that position without seeking a 2d term.
Arbour (right) made the announcement yesterday, days after opening the current session in Geneva of of the Human Rights Council.
As did a recent predecessor in the position, former Irish President Mary Robinson (below), the Montreal-born Arbour (prior posts here) has called a number of countries on the carpet for pursuing policies that falls short of meeting international human rights obligations. They include China, Zimbabwe, and, the United States. Yesterday's N.Y. Times story wrote of her claim last year that

the so-called U.S. war on terror was eroding the worldwide ban on torture, noting reports of secret U.S. detention centers. John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, said it was 'inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we're engaged in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers.'

The same story said that Arbour -- who, as we've posted, was the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia responsible for the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic and who also is a former Justice on Canada's Supreme Court -- said that family concerns and not criticism drove her decision:

She acknowledged that she found much of the criticism hurtful, but she said she was not quitting because of it. 'On the contrary, I have to resist the temptation to stay to confront it.'

Here's hoping her successor's another feisty steward of international human rights.

On February 12, ...

... 1554, at the Tower of London, Lady Jane Grey, who'd ruled England for 9 days in 1553, was executed along with her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley. Queen Mary I ordered the execution of Lady Jane (right) to quell mounting rebellion.
... 2002, onetime Serbian President Slobodon Milosevic went on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Charged with genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, Milosevic died in his jail cell in 2006, before any verdict was returned.

On December 20, ...

... 1992 (15 years ago today), Yugoslav-Communist-turned-nationalist Slobodan Milosevic was re-elected President of Serbia with 56% of the vote in an election riddled with accusations of fraud. He would go on to become President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, to be indicted and put on trial by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and, before entry of any verdict, to die in custody in 2006.
... 1988, the U.N. Convention against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances was adopted in Vienna, Austria. "This Convention provides comprehensive measures against drug trafficking, including provisions against money laundering and the diversion of precursor chemicals. It provides for international cooperation through, for example, extradition of drug traffickers, controlled deliveries and transfer of proceedings," as stated by its monitoring agency, the International Narcotics Control Board (logo above).