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I am not sure that is the case, though.

Wikipedia: Vojislav Šešelj

On February 11, 2009, after 71 witnesses had already been heard and with the expected conclusion of the prosecution's case just seven hours away, the presiding judges suspended Šešelj's trial indefinitely at the prosecutors' request. The prosecutors alleged that witnesses were being intimidated. Šešelj claimed that the true motive of the prosecutors was that they were losing their case. He claimed the court had presented numerous false witnesses to avoid having to acquit him and said it should pay him damages for "all the suffering and six years spent in detention." One of the three judges voted against the suspension of the trial stating that it was "unfair to interrupt the trial of someone who has spent almost six years in detention". The judges themselves had only the preceding January 21 opened a contempt of court case against him for revealing in a book he wrote the identity of three witnesses whose names had been ordered suppressed by the tribunal.
Now, there is a lot of reason to criticise the ICTY in the way it has handled most of the highest-profile cases. But your own position that Milosevic, Karadzic and, now, Seselj, are innocent victims of an inquisition, is untenable IMHO.

Whether they can be (or, in the case of Milosevic, could have been) convicted of war crimes or crimes against humanity in a fair trial is a different matter, and it is possible that they cannot. Certainly the prosecution has bungled some of the cases and give the appearance of less than fair trial. And, to me, it is maybe better to let a war criminal go than to taint international law with a string of sham trials.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Mar 12th, 2009 at 07:15:18 AM EST
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