Speech delivered by Professor Velko Valkanov, Founder and Co-Chairman of ICDSM, Chairman of the Bulgarian Commission for Human Rights, honorary Chairmen of the Bulgarian Antifascist Alliance, former member of Parliament and Presidential Candidate, at the ICDSM Press Conference at The Hague on February 17, 2004
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The so-called tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sits for almost three years in the Milosevic process.
That tribunal is illegal. Illegal not just because it was created by a body that lacks power to establish judicial bodies. It is illegal also because its own work is illegal. The whole work of the tribunal proceeds under constant violation of generally acknowledged rules for criminal trials.
Most of all it is violating the principle of equality of both parties in a criminal trial. The prosecution-power with its huge apparatus-got more than two years to collect and present evidence. The accused Milosevic got three months for the same task.. And one cannot forget that he is defending himself in person.
The tribunal uses every occasion to confine the rights of the accused Milosevic. The tribunal used the elections in Serbia as occasion to restrict Milosevic’s rights to communicate with the outside world. That is very base. Those measures are aimed to make Mr. Milosevic feel isolated and forgotten, aimed to weaken his defense psychological. By that, the tribunal turned into a direct participant in the Serbian elections und proved that it is more concerned about the outcome of the elections than about the legal development of the criminal trial against Milosevic. In criminal trials the search for the truth is paramount. All other circumstances cannot be relevant. Legally, they are absolutely irrelevant. The decision of the tribunal to abandon all communications of Mr. Milosevic serves as evidence of the thesis that the tribunal is not led by the inner-rules of criminal procedures but dominated by external circumstances that are totally extraneous to the criminal process. We have all reason to claim that the tribunal is not a court but an instrument of dark political forces, a instrument of political revenge.
We can also state that the tribunal constantly violates the presumption of innocence of the accused. It considers Mr. Milosevic as sentenced. It may be worth to think about the fact that last year, an amicus of the tribunal, Mr. Michail Wladimiroff, stated publicly that Mr. Milosevic will be found guilty in any case.
The tribunal acts irresponsible in the matter of Mr. Milosevic’s health. It ignores all signals showing that the health of the accused is extremely weak. One can ask whether Mr. Milosevic will survive the trial. One can also ask whether that might be the aim of the tribunal.
The process against Mr. Milosevic is going on for more than two years. That extensive time was not enough for the big apparatus of Carla del Ponte to prove the guilt of Mr. Milosevic. That is really strange. Please, listen to what I say: The Nurenberg tribunal was able to prove the guilt of 24 Nazis in less than one year. But the Hague tribunal cannot prove the guilt of just one person in its third year. The presentation of the prosecution’s evidence has gone well beyond any reasonable period of time and yet the evidence is no more compelling today than it was on the first day of the trial. What does it mean, the obvious impotence of the prosecution-power? It can only mean one thing: that they do not obtain real evidence of the guilt of Mr. Milosevic. Can there be evidence for a guilt, if the guilt itself does not exist?
So we come to the conclusion that that there is an innocent person in the Hague detention. That is not only a crime against justice but also a sin against human kind. It is a duty to fight for this persons freedom. It is a duty of conscience. We have no other choice.
Thank you for your attention.
