As powerful defense case is about to open – Hague court tries to stop Milosevic from representing himself at trial.
Despite objections from former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the NATO-created International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague stopped him on July 5 from presenting the defense half of his trial based on Milosevic’s medical problems. Milosevic’s supporters call this an attempt to use his medical condition to “silence the truth.”
Tiphaine Dickson, an attorney from Canada who is assisting Milosevic’s supporters, said, “The Prosecutor is attempting, yet again, to force President Milosevic to accept legal counsel to represent him, using his poor health as an excuse. President Milosevic has insisted that he represent himself from the onset. Within the U.S., the Supreme Court has recognized this as a right under the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. To refuse to allow him this right would turn the already illegal ICTY hearings into a star-chamber proceeding.”
In a conversation with his aide Vladimir Krsljanin regarding the latest developments, Milosevic said, “This illegal court is daring to judge biological and medical issues after they have proven incapable of judging legal and historical issues. This court is like the Inquisition.”
The defense was finally set to open after two years of prosecution testimony that included some 300 witnesses hostile to President Milosevic. Many observers believe that the prosecution has failed to present credible witnesses who can connect the defendant with the crimes with which he has been charged.
Madeleine Albright, who was U.S. secretary of state during the 1999 U.S.-NATO war against Yugoslavia, was seen in The Hague at the ICTY building on July 5. Supporters of Milosevic believe that her presence is connected with the court’s decision to postpone the trial and its attempt to change the rules.
Milosevic’s long-time aide, Vladimir Krsljanin, speaking from Belgrade on July 5, said, “What we have seen at The Hague is the worse kind of political theater. It is a legal outrage directed at the president. Slobodan Milosevic was brought to trial while he was suffering bad health conditions. Despite our pleas and complaints and the petitions of medical experts to the ICTY, it refused our demands for more time for preparation and rest for President Milosevic.”
“First the court created conditions that worsened his health and now they are using his ill health to justify stifling his presentation of his powerful defense case,” said Krsljanin.
In a recent document, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark has made himself clear on the issue of Milosevic’s right to defend himself: “President Milosevic chose to ‘defend himself in person,’ a fundamental human right recognized by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
On the prisoner’s health and the ICTY’s responsibility, Clark wrote in a recent document: ‘In the interest of truth, fairness in fact and appearance, justice and respect for international law and organizations, Slobodan Milosevic must be afforded medical and health care, living conditions that protect his well being, require presentation of prosecution evidence through witness testimony and provide the time and means necessary to present his defense in a fair trial in the absence of the abolition of the ICTY.”
Prosecution case: Two years long –
The ICTY opened the prosecution case in February 2002 after a year of preparation. At that time, the ICTY and the media presented the Milosevic case as “the trial of the century.” That’s when the prosecution hoped to use it as a show trial to convict the Yugoslav leader and blame him and the entire Serb people for the wars in the Balkans.
Within the first month, however, Milosevic had so ably handled his political and legal presentation, and had so effectively cross-examined hostile witnesses that many reporters had to admit that publicity on the case damaging NATO’s justification for the war.
Throughout the two years of prosecution that ended last February, President Milosevic was plagued by high blood pressure and a heart ailment. The court delayed proceedings, but refused to release him from the harsh prison conditions or to give him the medical care of his choice.
The ICTY allowed Milosevic only 90 days to prepare his defense and was to allow only 150 days for him to present it, half the time the court took for the prosecution. Any time there is a delay for his health, the court refuses to allow him access to any papers or books or to interview potential witnesses at leisure. He even lost 50 of the 90 days preparation for this reason.
As part of his defense case, Milosevic was preparing to call as witnesses a number of political analysts and activists who have written, spoken and organized against U.S. and NATO intervention in the Balkans. Some of these potential witnesses have contributed articles to ‘Hidden Agenda–the U.S.-NATO takeover of Yugoslavia,’ edited by John Catalinotto and Sara Flounders and published in 2002 by the International Action Center (IAC).
Flounders, who is a co-director of the IAC, was among those scheduled to be among the early witnesses and met with Milosevic in The Hague on June 28. She said that, “The attempt to remove Milosevic as his own attorney is an admission of President Milosevic’s innocence of the war-crimes charges and of the U.S. and NATO guilt in planning, executing and carrying out a 10-year war that broke a strong and successful Yugoslav Federation up into a half-dozen weak colonies and neo-colonies subservient to the United States and Western Europe.
“Just as the weapons of mass destruction have never been found in Iraq,” Flounders continued, “the charge of massacres, mass graves and genocide proved to be an utter fabrication in Kosovo. It is essential that President Milosevic have a full opportunity expose NATO’s war crimes and to defend Yugoslavia and to answer these charges against his government.”
