The International Criminal Tribunals

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The International Criminal Tribunals

• From Nuremburg to the ICC

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The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg

• The allied victors in WWII held trials of about
  200 Nazi leaders and generals in Nuremberg,
  Germany in 1945-49
  
• The tribunals provided real trials, not quick and
  dirty military justice. Justice Robert Jackson
  of the U.S. Supreme Court was one of the
  prosecutors.
• The tribunals imposed severe sentences, including
  death. Some defendants were acquitted.
  
• The tribunal was often criticized for applying
  laws that did not exist at the time the crimes
  were committed.
  
• A similar system was used to try Japanese war
  leaders.

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Article 6 of the IMT Charter

• The following acts, or any of them, are crimes
  coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal
  for which there shall be individual
  responsibility
• (a) Crimes against Peace namely, planning,
  preparation, initiation or waging of a war of
  aggression, or a war in violation of
  international treaties, agreements or assurances,
  or participation in a Common Plan or Conspiracy
  for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing
• (b) War Crimes namely, violations of the laws or
  customs of war. Such violations shall include,
  but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or
  deportation to slave labor or for any other
  purpose of civilian population of or in occupied
  territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners
  of war or persons on the seas, killing of
  hostages, plunder of public or private property,
  wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages,
  or devastation not justified by military
  necessity
• (c) Crimes against Humanity namely, murder,
  extermination, enslavement, deportation, and
  other inhumane acts committed against any
  civilian population, before or during the war, or
  persecutions on political, racial, or religious
  grounds in execution of or in connection with any
  crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal,
  whether or not in violation of domestic law of
  the country where perpetrated.

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The 1990s Revival of a Dormant Idea

• From Nuremburg until 1990 the idea of giving
  human rights an international criminal dimension
  was dormant.
  
• The idea of international criminal tribunals was
  resurrected around 1990. Criminal tribunals for
  Yugoslavia and Rwanda were created.
  
• The international tribunals have been very
  expensive. Why have European countries been
  willing to pay the price?
  
• Answer because they want to create a workable
  system to punish outlaws and deter potential
  outlaws

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• Yugoslav Wars 1991-2001
• A series of violent secessionist conflicts in the
  territory of the former Socialist Federal
  Republic of Yugoslavia
  
• The wars involved bitter ethnic conflicts between
  Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians.
  
• The wars were the bloodiest conflicts in Europe
  since the end of World War II.
  
• Ethnic cleansing and genocide occurred frequently
  during these wars.

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Account of the Yugoslav Wars from the CIA Factbook

• In the early 1990s, post-TITO Yugoslavia began to
  unravel along ethnic lines Slovenia, Croatia,
  and The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia all
  declared their independence in 1991 Bosnia and
  Herzegovina in 1992.
• The remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro
  declared a new "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"
  in 1992 and, under President Slobodan MILOSEVIC
  
• Serbia led various military intervention efforts
  to unite Serbs in neighboring republics into a
  "Greater Serbia." All of these efforts were
  ultimately unsuccessful.
• In 1999, massive expulsions by Serbs of ethnic
  Albanians living in the autonomous republic of
  Kosovo provoked an international response,
  including the NATO bombing of Serbia and the
  stationing of NATO and Russian peacekeepers in
  Kosovo.

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The Intl Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia

• Was established by the UN Security Council to
  prosecute serious crimes committed during the
  Yugoslav wars
  
• The tribunal is temporary and is located in The
  Hague in the Netherlands
  
• Its mandate covers violations of the laws or
  customs of war, genocide, and crimes against
  humanity
  
• The Tribunal is expected to finish its work
  around 2010

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The Case of Radislav Krstic

• Was the Chief of Staff and Deputy Commander of
  the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army from
  October 1994 until July 1995. He assumed command
  of the Drina Corps on 13 July 1995.
• In 1998 Krstic was indicted for War Crimes by the
  International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
  Yugoslavia in The Hague in connection with the
  massacre of 8,100 Bosniak men and boys during the
  1995 Srebrenica massacre.
• On August 2, 2001, Krstic became the first man
  convicted of genocide by the Tribunal, and was
  sentenced to 46 years in prison.
  
• On appeal his conviction for genocide was
  overturned but the appeals court upheld the
  lesser charge that he aided and abetted genocide.

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Wikipedia on the Srebrenica Massacre

• The Srebrenica Massacre was the July 1995 killing
  of an estimated 8,000 Bosniak boys and men, in
  the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and
  Herzegovina by units of the Army of Republika
  Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko
  Mladic during the Bosnian War.
• The Srebrenica massacre is the largest mass
  murder in Europe since World War II. In the
  unanimous ruling "Prosecutor v. Krstic", the
  Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal
  Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY),
  located in The Hague, ruled that the Srebrenica
  massacre was genocide, the Presiding Judge
  Theodor Meron stating
• By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian
  Muslims Bosniaks, the Bosnian Serb forces
  committed genocide. They targeted for extinction
  the forty thousand Bosnian Muslims living in
  Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the
  Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the
  male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian,
  elderly and young, of their personal belongings
  and identification, and deliberately and
  methodically killed them solely on the basis of
  their identity.

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The Genocide in Rwanda

• This 1994 genocide, which killed approximately
  800,000 people, resulted from a longstanding
  ethnic conflict between Hutus and Tutsis.
  
• The killing, carried out by people from the
  bigger ethnic group (Hutus), was directed against
  a smaller group (Tutsis) and against Hutu
  moderates.
• North American and European governments have been
  harshly criticized for failing to intervene to
  stop the killing.
  

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The Account of the Conflict from the CIA Factbook

• In 1959, three years before independence from
  Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus,
  overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next
  several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed,
  and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring
  countries.
• The children of these exiles later formed a rebel
  group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and
  began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with
  several political and economic upheavals,
  exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April
  1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis
  and moderate Hutus.
• The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and
  ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately
  2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi
  retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi,
  Tanzania, Uganda, and the former Zaire.
• Since then, most of the refugees have returned to
  Rwanda, but several thousand remained in the
  neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (the
  former Zaire) and formed an extremist insurgency
  bent on retaking Rwanda, much as the RPF tried in
  1990.

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Hutus and Tutsis

• The Hutu are the largest of the three ethnic
  groups in Burundi and Rwanda. More than 80 of
  Rwandans and Burundians are Hutu. There are
  between 5 and 10 million Hutus in the two
  countries.
• The Tutsi are an achieving minority. There are
  about 2.5 million Tutsi in Burundi and Rwanda
  

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The ICTR

• Created in late 1994 by the UN Security Council
  to prosecute people responsible for the Rwandan
  genocide in 1994
  
• The ICTR follows the model of the ICTY, and
  initially shared the same chief prosecutor.
  
• The ICTR has convicted about 35 people.

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Issues about the International Tribunals

• Can they provide impartial justice?
• Does providing criminal justice promote peace and
  reconciliation?
  
• Should they have been conducted in the country
  where the crimes were committed?
  
• Should they have used local as well as
  international judges?