Bid to Throw Out Milosevic Genocide Charge
“PA Newswire”, May 2004
[We have added a few comments in black italics]
The UN war crimes tribunal received a motion today to dismiss genocide charges against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for lack of evidence.
The motion came in a 95-page brief by three amici curiae, or friends of the court, who were appointed to help protect the interests of the former Yugoslav president and ensure a fair trial.
The motion also sought immediate acquittal on other charges related to the wars in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia that convulsed the Balkans during the 1990s.
The three independent lawyers argued there was no evidence that Milosevic specifically intended to exterminate Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 Bosnian War, as alleged in his indictment.
“There is no evidence the accused planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a genocide or genocidal acts”, the amici wrote.
The prosecution also failed to prove that any of Milosevic’s subordinates committed genocide, which requires proof they had the prior intent to destroy a racial, ethnic or religious group. [It was routine practice for the ICTY to issue its indictments before any evidence had been gathered to support the charges made. This was in itself highly irregular and, in any proper legal system, would have prevented the cases from ever coming to court. More damning still, there was no sign in ICTY court proceedings that any further evidence had been gathered by the time trials began.]
The genocide charges “should be excised from the Bosnia indictment at this stage of the proceedings”, the motion said.
It was not clear when the tribunal would rule on the motion.Milosevic is defending himself against 66 counts of war crimes. The amici were appointed because he has no prior courtroom experience even though he was trained as a lawyer.
Milosevic is charged with one count of genocide and one of complicity in genocide for the massacre by Serb forces of more than 7,000 Muslims in the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. [‘Complicity in genocide’ means Joint Criminal Enterprise – also known as Just Convict Everyone – a new offence under international law, created by The Hague Tribunal despite the strict instruction from the UN Security Council that the ICTY should enforce only existing international law.]
The motion had been widely expected. Independent analysts agreed the prosecution case on the genocide charge was weak, and the prosecutors themselves reportedly were bitterly divided over whether to include the charges in the indictment. [The prosecution case was indeed very weak. As the scientific evidence (the forensics and the DNA identifications) was presented only in the form of verbal reports of findings unsupported by primary data, the case rested entirely on uncorroborated testimony from large numbers of claimed eyewitnesses and a great deal of hearsay evidence. It was in fact no case at all.]
Prosecutors concluded their case against Milosevic last month, two years after his trial began in February 2002. Milosevic is due to begin presenting his defence on June 8.
The motion came amid a reorganisation of the tribunal following the unexpected resignation last month of presiding judge Richard May due to an undisclosed illness. [May had just learned that he had advanced cancer. His visible bias at all stages of the Milosevic trial had been extreme. His retirement significantly reduced the chances that any final conviction of Milosevic would have seemed at all credible.]