Monthly Archives: March 2016

Today, the ICTY issued its long awaited Judgment in the Karadzic case. Given its length, over 2500 pages, this post can obviously not provide any comprehensive analysis of the Judgment. I do however want to share 6 quick initial and general thoughts :

• As noted, the Judgment is very long. This might seem a little shocking at first, but given the length of the trial, the huge body of evidence adduced from the trial and the crimes covered, its length can be understandable. Which does not mean that this is not problematic. There has to be something wrong with a system, from the OTP charging strategy, to the case management by the Judges, for such a Judgment to be rendered. Nobody is going to read 2500 pages and questions can certainly be asked about the pedagogic effect of international judgments.

• Which brings me to my second point: the fundamental question of the usefulness of international judgments generally. Indeed, following the build-up to the delivery of the Judgment in the general media, it was obvious that Karadzic was already considered to be guilty. All that everybody expected was a formal confirmation of their view that this was indeed the case and nobody would have accepted an acquittal (as shown by initial reactions to the acquittal of Karadzic on one count of genocide, or the “inadequate” 40 year prison sentence). This means that in fact, there is an expectation of conviction and the idea that an acquittal is not an option. This shows in fact very little respect for the criminal law process, based on the presumption of innocence.

• Rather unsurprisingly, the Chamber acquitted Karadzic for the Count of Genocide in relation to the Municipalities. This is unsurprising because the Chamber had already dismissed this Count under Rule 98(bis), before being overturned by the Appeals Chamber. There is now consistent case-law that there was no genocidal intent in the rest of Bosnia and I remain surprised at the criticism leveled at the ICTY on this point: clearly, ICTY Judges, who in the past have stretched the definitions of crimes, modes of liability and acceptable evidence beyond recognition to cast as wide a net as possible in the “fight against impunity”, can hardly be considered as genocide apologists and if they have not found evidence of genocidal intent in so many cases, it must mean something.

• I look forward to the Appeals process. Given the fact that Appeals Chamber has already decided that there is sufficient evidence of genocidal intent for the Municipalities Count when overturning the 98bis decision, it is easy to guess that the OTP will appeal that acquittal. Also, there seem to have been countless disclosure violations by the Prosecution (108 (!)motions were filed by Karadzic to that effect, a lot of them successful). Peter Robinson, Karadzic’s legal advisor, has been documenting them on his twitter feed. One tweet, posted on the eve of the Judgment, if true, certainly raises question about the fairness of the process:

Just rec’d 208 pages of exculpatory material in #Karadzic case from #ICTY prosecution this afternoon. Seriously, prosecutors?

— Peter Robinson (@PeterRobinICTY) 23 mars 2016

• As an aside to the delivery of the Judgment, the ICTY sealed a solid victory in its fight against impunity, by getting the Dutch authorities to arrest Florence Hartmann (images of her arrest here), a French journalist who was fined 7000 euro for publishing information in a book on the content of confidential decisions of the ICTY (images of her arrest here). The fine was later commuted to a 7-day prison sentence. This is rather ridiculous, and I’m sure that the ICTY has better things to do that this… or maybe not.

• And a final fun fact: a search for “Mladic” in the Judgment comes up with 1883 hits… Anybody care to take bets on the outcome of that trial?