International Criminal Tribunal For The Former Yugoslavia - Criticism

Criticism

Skeptics argued that an international court could not function while the war in the former Yugoslavia was still going on. This would be a huge undertaking for any court, but for the ICTY it would be an even greater one, as the new tribunal still needed judges, a prosecutor, a registrar, investigative and support staff, an extensive interpretation and translation system, a legal aid structure, premises, equipment, courtrooms, detention facilities, guards and all the related funding.

Criticisms levelled against the court include:

• On 6 December 2006, the Tribunal at The Hague approved the use of force-feeding of Serbian politician Vojislav Šešelj. They decided it was not "torture, inhuman or degrading treatment if there is a medical necessity to do so...and if the manner in which the detainee is force-fed is not inhuman or degrading".
• Reducing the indictment charges - after the arrest of Ratko Mladić, Croatian officials publicly condemned chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz for his announcement that the former Bosnian Serb General will be on trial only for crimes committed in Bosnia, but not for those crimes committed in Croatia (Škabrnja massacre, shelling of Zadar, Šibenik, Požega, Kijevo as well as the destruction of the Peruća dam).
• Critics have questioned whether the Tribunal exacerbates tensions rather than promotes reconciliation, as is claimed by Tribunal supporters. Polls show a generally negative reaction to the Tribunal among the Serb and Croat public. The majority of Croats and Serbs doubt the tribunal's integrity and question the tenability of its legal procedures (although the Serbian and Croatian opinions on the court are almost always exactly the opposite with regard to the cases that involve both parties).
• Critics, even within the United Nations, have complained of the Tribunal's high cost. The two-year budget for the Tribunal for 2004 and 2005 was $271,854,600 (currently $324 million). The cost is borne by all U.N. members.
• Critics have also complained of the length of trials, with some extending for several years. Supporters of the Tribunal respond that many of the defendants are charged with multiple crimes against many victims, all of which must be proven beyond reasonable doubt, thus requiring long trials. Simultaneous translation also slows trials.
• No indictments for NATO officials - even though the ICTY indicted and convicted individuals from every nation involved in the Yugoslav Wars, not a single indictment has been issued for NATO officials. Noam Chomsky observed that the ICTY should have indicted Tony Blair and Bill Clinton together with Milosevic over Kosovo War.
• 68% of indictees have been Serbs (or Montenegrins), to the extent that a sizeable portion of the Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serbian political and military leaderships have been indicted. Many have seen this as reflecting bias, while the Tribunal's defenders have seen this as indicative of the actual proportion of crimes committed. However, Marko Attila Hoare observed how, apart from Milošević, only Momčilo Perišić (Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army) has been indicted from the Serbian military or political top when it comes to wars in Croatia and Bosnia.
• According to Attila Hoare, a former employee at the ICTY, an investigative team worked on indictments of senior members of the ‘joint criminal enterprise’, including not only Milosevic but also Veljko Kadijevic, Blagoje Adzic, Borisav Jovic, Branko Kostic, Momir Bulatovic and others. However, upon Carla del Ponte’s intervention, these drafts were rejected, and the indictment limited to Milosevic alone, as a result of which most of these individuals were never indicted.
• Allegations of censorship - in July 2011, the Appeals Chamber of ICTY confirmed the judgment of the Trial Chamber which found journalist and former Tribunal’s OTP spokesperson Florence Hartmann guilty of contempt of court and fined her €7,000. She disclosed documents of FR Yugoslavia’s Supreme Defense Council meetings and criticized the Tribunal for granting confidentiality of some information in them to protect Serbia’s ‘vital national interests' during Bosnia's lawsuit against the country for genocide in front of the International Court of Justice. Hartmann argued that Serbia was freed of charge of genocide because ICTY redacted some information in the Council meetings. Since these documents have in the meantime been made public by the ICTY itself, a group of organizations and individuals who supported her said that the Tribunal in this appellate proceedings "imposed a form of censorship aimed to protect the international judges from any form of criticism".
• Klaus-Peter Willsch compared the Ante Gotovina verdict, where the late Croatian president Franjo Tuđman was posthumously found to have been participating in a Joint Criminal Enterprise, with the 897 Cadaver Synod trial in Rome, when Pope Stephen VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus exhumed, put on trial and posthumously found guilty.
• Too mild sentences - some circles, even within the Tribunal, complained at small sentences of convicted war criminals in comparison with their crimes. In 2010, Veselin Šljivančanin's sentence for his involvement in the Vukovar massacre was cut from 17 to 10 years, which caused outrage in Croatia. Upon hearing that news, Dr. Vesna Bosanac, in charge of the Vukovar hospital during the fall of the city, said that the "ICTY is dead" for her: "For crimes that he, had committed in Vukovar, notably at Ovcara, he should have been jailed for life. I'm outraged...The Hague(-based) tribunal has showed again that it is not just a tribunal." Danijel Rehak, the head of Croatian Association of Prisoners in Serbian Concentration Camps, said: "The shock of families whose beloved ones were killed at Ovcara is unimaginable. The court made a crucial mistake by accepting a statement of a JNA officer to whom Sljivancanin was a commander. I cannot understand that." Pavle Strugar's 8 year sentence for shelling of Dubrovnik, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, also caused outrage in Croatia. Judge Kevin Horace Parker has even been named in a Croatian Journal as the main cause of failure of the system because he dismissed numerous testimonies of witnesses.

Some of the defendants, such as Slobodan Milošević, claimed that the Court has no legal authority because it was established by the UN Security Council instead of the UN General Assembly, therefore it had not been created on a broad international basis. The Tribunal was established on the basis of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter; the relevant portion of which reads "the Security Council can take measures to maintain or restore international peace and security". The legal criticism has been succinctly stated in a Memorandum issued by Austrian Professor Hans Köchler, which was submitted to the President of the Security Council in 1999. British Conservative Party MEP Daniel Hannan has called for the court to be abolished, claiming that it is anti-democratic and a violation of national sovereignty.