Carla del PonteThe death of Slobodan Milosevic is a real catastrophe for the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia for at least three reasons. Firstly, with the death of Slobodan Milosevic, The Hague has lost its main indictee, the reason why the court was established in the first place. Apart from the fact that it was constantly mentioned that the Hague Tribunal would charge all leading criminals independent of their nationality, that they would not look at which country the criminal originated from, and that they would be sentenced solely on the weight of their actions, it was initially established to try Slobodan Milosevic, the instigator of wars and crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, so all completed crimes are a direct or indirect consequence of what he started.

However often other perpetrators of crimes were mentioned, even those, such as the commander of the Army of Republika Srpska Ratko Mladic, guilty of horrific individual crimes, such as Mladic’s responsibility for 8000 dead in Srebrenica, everything that occurred on the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the decade of war – from the war in Slovenia, to the war in Kosovo – originates back to him. However often the Serbians try to claim that all sides were responsible for crimes, Milosevic was one of a kind, and all the others - even Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, and especially criminals from other countries, were not his equal.

The Hague Tribunal has lost its main protagonist, and therefore it has lost much of its main reason for existence. The trial of Milosevic was the only trial which really justified its existence, because all other proceedings which are ongoing, for example the leader of the rebellious Croatian Serbs Milan Martic, the so-called Vukovar Trio, Naser Oric, and those anticipated such as the trial of Vojislav Seselj or Ante Gotovina, do not and will not have such political charge. Nor will this be the case with the trial of Mladic and Karadzic, if they ever appear in The Hague.

The trial of Milosevic was not a proceeding against a local commander for an individual massacre, for torturing prisoners in a camp, for destroying a mosque or a bridge, but a trial which was meant to determine who was historically responsible for aggression, genocide, for the horrific harm to millions of people; it was meant to prove who was guilty of the tragedy of the Yugoslavian people throughout the 1990s, to determine the historical responsibility, not only of individuals, but for the communities which were involved in leadership. For this reason, among other things, the Tribunal was established, to determine the historical responsibility and the truth, so that the determination of guilt would be the stone foundation for constructing new relationships between nations which live on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. This task was not completed by the Tribunal, nor will it ever be.

The second reason this is a catastrophic blow to the Hague Tribunal is the fact that this death completely uncovered all the inefficiency and incapability of that court. Milosevic was delivered to the Tribunal on 28 June 2001, nearly four years and nine months ago, and his conviction on the first offence has not even been completed. After World War II, the international judges in Nürnberg tried twenty-four of the most responsible Nazi criminals for executed crimes which were worse than those committed by Milosevic, and were legally more complicated because there were no international legal norms existing at the time for some of the committed acts; despite that, the entire proceedings, however, were completed in only eleven months. The convicts were executed or sent to death only 18 months after the war.

There is no excuse for why Milosevic’s trial took so long, and it cannot even be explained by the fact that Milosevic was often ill, so the trial was postponed over ten times. The Prosecutor’s Office and Trial Chamber, which usually executed the procedure neatly and precisely, had to reduce the indictment for key items, shorten the process and convict Milosevic. Even in Nürnberg, those convicted were not tried for every crime which the Nazi’s were responsible for. This slow trial began to appear to have a purpose of its own, as a means for well paid judges, persecutors, and court officials to lengthen their large expense accounts and soft jobs.

The third reason is that any form of so-called cooperation between Serbia and the Hague Tribunal will be more difficult. After the news of Milosevic’s death was published in Serbia, many of his Serbian apologists emerged claiming that he was murdered in prison. Some claimed this literally, that he was poisoned, which apparently has been confirmed by one of Milosevic’s letters, and the second in a projected sense, claiming that this prolonged trial and harassment were intentionally planned to drive him to death. Whatever the case, many people in Serbia today are convinced that the Hague Tribunal is actually a place of suffering for Serbian prisoners, as four have already died there. The Court Council is blamed for not accepting Milosevic’s request to allow him to go to Moscow for treatment, even though it is completely clear that the Council could not have approved this, because it did not have any legal guarantee that he would return to The Hague. But that single logical decision is now being used to convince the Serbian public that the Court Council brought about that decision to kill Milosevic before completion of the trial, because apparently with his brilliant defence, he destroyed all arguments held by the prosecutor.

Leading people from the Serbian Radical Party have spoke over the past several months about how the Hague Tribunal has postponed proceedings against its leader Vojislav Seselj and transfered to a very unfavourable part of the prison in an attempt to kill him out of their fear of him. In this atmosphere, it is difficult to expect that the Serbian government will invest greater efforts to arrest and extradite Ratko Mladic, for which they have received a deadline for the beginning of April, or the negotiation on stabilization and accession to the European Union will be aborted. After Milosevic’s death, Mladic and Karadzic, seeing how he ended up, have one less reason to turn themselves in, and those from the Serbian government hierarchy who protect them and are against cooperation with the Hague Tribunal have one less reason to change their opinion. Without Milosevic, the weakened Hague Tribunal will be even less relevant without Mladic and Karadzic. And if they do not appear there, every point of the Tribunal is lost, as well as the sentences which have been issued until now.

Those are three key reasons as to why the Hague Tribunal will have a hard time recovering from this blow, as well as return its authority and reputation which it was meant to have, and had in the first years of its operation. The Tribunal was, undoubtedly, necessary, because the local judicial systems were not capable of convicting war criminals. The truth needed to be determined, but the system used in The Hague did not prove effective. Things went wrong because of those who led the Tribunal, and there is special blame for Chief Prosecutor to the Hague Carla Del Ponte for the strange manner in which she wrote and raised charges. At a press conference held on Sunday in The Hague, she wanted to give the impression that nothing important happened, and that during the trial they proved that Milosevic was a criminal; she also stated that the expected extradition of Mladic and Karadzic will go much faster now, because, as she says, she has been convinced from Belgrade that there will be no changes in its cooperation with the Hague Tribunal. Nothing, however, will be the same, and she is most to blame for that.

All of a sudden this woman, whom many people praised, is most blamed because Milosevic was not formally proclaimed one of the largest world criminals after World War II and because there was no verdict proclaiming his responsibility for the aggression and genocide, massive crimes, and deportation of a huge number of people. She was the one who raised the charges against him, and in her megalomania she wrote such detailed charges that the trial of Milosevic simply could not be completed in any logical period of time. And she did that because in the character of that small woman, barely 152 centimetres tall, there exists a dose of megalomania and arrogance which she always showed.

She was born on 9 February 1947 in Lugano in the Italian part of Switzerland. She first considered entering the medical field, like her two older brothers, but instead she studied law in Bern, Geneva and London. After graduating, she worked at a private law office, and in 1975 she opened her own office. In 1981, she entered the prosecution. One of her biographies wrote that she did this because she felt that this job better suited her “because she did not believe that all of her clients were innocent”. First she was an investigative judge, and then she became an district attorney for Lugano. In this usually calm rich town, where many foreign rich people lived, the main crimes were financial and there were many cases of suspicious ownership; many criminals invested the money they earned in many ways in the banks there, so she mainly investigated the illegal movement of money from arms dealing, drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling, and the mafia, especially from neighbouring Italy.

She cooperated closely with the Italian plaintiffs, among which is the famous Giovanni Falcone, who started a large action against the mafia. When she once visited Falcone in Palermo, the mafia, spiteful of her, placed 40 kilograms of explosives in the basement of the villa where she was staying; this was luckily discovered before it was activated. Her colleague Falcone did not have the same luck so the mafia killed him and his wife with explosives placed on the highway. Because of her investigations, she received constant protection, and was the only person in Switzerland who was protected 24 hours a day. People began to speak of her when she began investigations against several very famous people: Russian President Boris Jeljcin was suspected of cooperating with the Russian mafia, she confiscated the suspicious $118 million USD from the account of Mexican President Carlos Salinas’s brother, and she blocked the account of Pakistan Premier Benazir Bhutto for suspicions of corruption.

When the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague opened the position for the Chief Prosecutor in 1999, after the expiry of the mandate held by Canadian Louise Arbour, it seemed that she could be the appropriate heir mainly due to her perseverance, courage, and the fact that she is not impressed by authority. Whether these characteristics of hers have proven good or bad after the flared controversy, they will become even harsher now.

Carla Del Ponte concentrated on two tasks, to raise charges against as many main actors of the Yugoslavian events in the 1990s, and extradite as many of these actors to The Hague. She denounced this new form of politics, saying that the charges against committers of individual crimes would be left to the local judicial systems, and she would concentrate on the ‘big fish’. She raised more than fifty charges, of which several caused much controversy and discomfort. With time, it was noticeable that she is not directed only towards legal, but towards political criteria, and that she was careful as to raise charges against actors from all nations of the region of the former Yugoslavia; only the Slovenians were exempt. Many interpreted this as her political intention to historically balance the blame for the events on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which she energetically denied.

She was allegedly angry that Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic died too early, along with several of their colleagues before she managed to charge them, so she began to give greater significance to several smaller actors in her charges than that which they actually had, in order to spread responsibility through them for their wider community. Because of the politicization of the Prosecutor’s Office, which spread to the entire Tribunal, it began to lose its reputation and reliability exactly where it should have the greatest reputation, in the areas which were the victims of aggression and genocide, which could not accept her tendency to show equal blame to all sides.

The other task which she assigned was to bring as many culprits to The Hague, and for that she put much pressure on all areas where the runaway culprits originated from; she was supported in this by the European political institutions, which in cooperation with The Hague Tribunal, instigated this as a condition for its cooperation with these countries. The most important event was when Slobodan Milosevic came to The Hague in June 1991, not so much because of her pressure, but because of the spirited decision by the former Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic to send him there. It suited him that Milosevic ended up in The Hague for Serbian internal political reasons.

In her attitude towards Milosevic, she showed many her megalomania. She wrote a large indictment of 66 points, and that is why the trial was on hold. This effort to prove herself to her colleague Geoffrey Nice, who led the prosecution in the Milosevic proceedings, required much time for the evidential proceedings, which then had to be given to Milosevic for contestation. Instead of sticking to the rule that “slow justice is no justice”, she overstretched the trial to prove her own importance, and destroyed everything she had done until then. At the beginning of her mandate, in one interview she said: “We cannot forget the victims; they are the most important thing. In the proceedings that we are leading, I want to be the voice of the victims, so that they receive what they require, that justice is served”.

In the trial against Milosevic, she, however, betrayed the victims. In the most important trial in The Hague, she did not succeed in achieving that the culprit was tried on time, that his guilt was proven, which was her main task, and now in the eyes of his followers he has become the victim, even a victim of the apparent murder committed by the Hague Tribunal. The political message of what occurred is exactly the opposite of what she claimed she wanted to achieve in the name of the victims. As the New York Times wrote, instead of coming to a verdict to finally bring a historical account on who is to blame for the tragedy in the Yugoslavian region, and to bring peace with it, Milosevic’s death without a verdict only strengthened the Serbian myth on how the Serbians are a nation of victims, which was for many Serbians, Milosevic’s followers, the main self-explanation for them to start the war, and for which they will evoke new wars in the future. Carla Del Ponte will be to blame for that as well.