Diana observes the Karadzic trial at The Hague (Diana Wallis MEP)

Diana Wallis MEP <info@dianawallismep.org.uk>

Diana observes the Karadzic trial at The Hague

June 8, 2010 10:52 AM

Diana visits The Hague and observes the Karadzic trial at first hand. Here are her remarks:

"Last week I had the chance to visit the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, something that I had always wanted to do. This is even more apposite at present so as to see at first hand the trial of Radovan Karadzic - the man who was perhaps most responsible for the horrendous events at Srebrenica. What I was not prepared for was my reaction to what I saw in the small court room in The Hague.

"Karadzic was there, instantly recognisable, with his now well known shock of white hair. There he was, clean and presentable conducting his own defence, thanking the witness for each and every contribution. Yet that was it. It was his defence but he seemed to be the one setting the pace, by dictating the questions he appeared in charge. He might as well have been the prosecutor. If he was not so instantly recognisable I might have mistaken the lay out of the court room and the role of the protagonists.

"The witness under examination was some sort of expert on Bosnian politics. He had an English accent from the other side of the Atlantic. He was at pains to make clear that he was not a constitutional expert. It was about the various incarnations of the Bosnian constitution that Karadzic wanted to question him. It seemed that the line of his questioning went in the direction of suggesting that somehow, because of various attempted parliamentary amendments and discussions about the constitution which may or may not have been successful, he had political or even constitutional justification for the acts which he carried out. This was being examined as a serious and real possibility. The judges carefully considering various documents.

"While this was going on I had one image in my mind. It occurs every July at Srebrenica: the silent chain of people passing small coffins along a human line to their burial place, just a strange sliding breathe of palms against wood. The channelling of those remains at last identified, often from various sites, to a final resting place and for some sort of closure for relatives and friends. There are hundreds of such tiny coffins each year, victims of a massacre for which it is generally accepted that this man in the Hague court room was largely responsible; whatever constitution was in force.

"As a lawyer I always accepted the need for international justice but this charade just makes me angry. I become more angry as I see Karadzic every so often glancing towards the public gallery He is enjoying this. He is gaining exposure for his nationalistic claptrap; his own particular message of hate is being given a veneer of respectability. Where will this end? With him serving a sentence in some fairly comfortable Scandinavian prison? I can feel the heat of Srebrenica on a burning July day; there is no mercy in the glare of the Bosnian sun at that time of year.

"Bosnia is still suffering and it stills threatens to fracture. Fracture again because there has been no truth and reconciliation, rather just this man playing the court room jester at vast expense to the international community. What sort of justice is this that allows him to taunt his victims again as witnesses? I would rather see the money spent on this trial used in Bosnia, in the communities there, in an attempt to return life to some sort of normality. Just what will this gladiatorial version of justice achieve? I had expected something more of international justice; does this really serve a purpose?"