War Tribunal Cleans Up Its Act - International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia
Charges of covering up U.S. war crimes and conflicts of interest have led to the resignations of key members of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia.
As first reported in Insight (see “Just What Is a War Criminal” Aug. 2), on July 8 the International Ethical Alliance, or IEA, submitted legal pleadings to the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, or ICTY, calling for evenhanded justice in the prosecution of war crimes. The IEA supported the prosecution of President Slobodan Milosevic, but it also charged the ICTY’s prosecutor, Louise Arbour, with covering up war crimes committed by President Clinton and Secretary of Defense William Cohen. Drawing upon facts first detailed by former president Jimmy Carter in the New York Times relating to the use of cluster bombs and the illegal targeting of civilians, the IEA pointed out that ICTY was receiving substantial contributions, including compensation for members of the panel, directly from the United States and other countries involved in the alleged crime — resulting in a substantial conflict of interest.
Despite the fact that IEA’s filings seemingly were ignored by the conflicted panel, three of the five justices cited by the IEA for conflicts have resigned before the end of their terms, including Arbour. Transmitted by fax and priority air mail, the pleadings included a request for a preliminary hearing by Aug. 10. But IEA received no response until Aug. 25. A cursory note from a deputy registrar sent by ordinary mail said, “Your letter has subsequently not been filed, but has been forwarded to the Office of the Prosecutor.”
The term “Office of the Prosecutor,” of course, referred to Arbour’s own office. The IEA had petitioned the tribunal to disqualify her (as well as four other justices) for “receiving compensation from funds contributed to the Tribunal in whole or in part by NATO countries; and biases in favor of NATO countries.”
Christopher Black, a Canadian lawyer with more than 20 years experience in criminal-defense practice, has investigated the tribunal’s funding. He advised the IEA that the ICTY is not financed solely from the U.N. budget, as required by its authorizing statute.
According to Black, in the last year for which public figures are available (1994-95) the United States provided $700,000 in cash and $2.3 million worth of equipment. In the same year, the court received substantial tax-deductible private financing from such groups as the Open Society Institute (a foundation established by billionaire George Soros), the Rockefeller Foundation and the Central and East European Law Institute (created by the American Bar Association and lawyers close to the United States).
In more recent years, the ICTY’s chief justice, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (an American) and prosecutor Arbour (a Canadian) both have been engaged in soliciting tax-deductible donations for the tribunal from private sources, Black reports. However, since 1995 the ICTY has published the amounts of private contributions and the names of donors.
In alleging that Arbour was ignoring war crimes by Clinton, IEA’s pleadings included verbatim quotes from an article by Carter in the New York Times May 27, calling “the destruction of civilian life … senseless and brutal” Carter also attacked the use of antipersonnel cluster bombs that caused damage to hospitals, offices and residences of ambassadors.
The IEA’s unfiled pleadings charged that the acts described by Carter were being ignored intentionally by Arbour even though they indisputably were violations of U.N. treaties.
On June 10, shortly after the Carter article appeared, more charges of NATO war crimes were published in Spain’s Articulo 20. It was reported that Capt. Adolfo Luis Martin de la Hoz of the Spanish air force had participated in NATO bombings but now denounces them as “one of the biggest savageries of history…. NATO’s repeated bombings of civilian victims and nonmilitary targets were not `errors.’”
According to de la Hoz, NATO chiefs were selecting such targets intentionally and also were using bombs containing uranium. De la Hoz and other Spanish pilots learned that “there was a coded order of the North American military that we should drop antipersonnel bombs over the [civilian] localities of Pristina and Nish.” The Spanish group refused to carry out the order. The Spanish pilots thus provided eyewitness corroboration of Carter’s prior charges. Although the de la Hoz article received much attention abroad, it went unreported in mainstream U.S. media. With the exception of Insight and the New York Times, Carter’s denunciation of the bombings also has been all but ignored by the U.S. media.
Also first reported in Insight was the endorsement of the IEA’s pleadings by Tom Hutson, who has served for 32 years as a State Department official. After spending the last four years as a top career diplomat in Yugoslavia, Hutson protested the bombings of Belgrade and left State. He also corroborates — and denounces — U.S. use of uranium-containing weapons.