The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has reached a new low. They have selected a British attorney named Richard Harvey to "defend" former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic in his war crimes trial in The Hague -- and they've done this completely against the will of the defendant.
Marko Sladojevic, one of Karadzic's chosen legal advisers, told the AP news agency that "Mr. Harvey has absolutely no knowledge whatsoever about the case," and Karadzic won't cooperate with him.
In my previous columns, I explained how the Tribunal denied Karadzic the same pre-trial preparation time it afforded to several high profile non-Serbian defendants, I've also written how the Tribunal cut-off funding to Karadzic's chosen legal advisors, but this takes the cake.
The first thing that stands out about this so-called "defense attorney" is the fact that he comes from a NATO country. NATO was a party to the Bosnian war; NATO bombed the Bosnian-Serbs. It doesn't look right for the so-called "defense attorney" to come from the enemy camp. How would it look if Karadzic was an American, and the lawyer came from someplace like Iran, or North Korea?
Mr. Harvey not only comes from an enemy country, he is also a defender of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian terrorist organization that waged a secessionist war against Serbia and cleansed Kosovo of nearly its entire Serbian and other non-Albanian populations. Harvey is in bed with the Serbs' biggest enemies -- and he's the one the Tribunal picked to "defend" a Serbian leader.
Here is what Harvey had to say about the KLA and the Serbs in a brief he filed for KLA commander Lahi Brahimaj: "the Kosovar Albanians waged a national liberation struggle against alien domination ... the KLA sought to be a professional and honorable army, in contrast to the tactics of the Serbs against the ethnic Albanian population."
Here is a photo of Harvey's "professional and
honorable" KLA posing with the severed heads of Serbs they butchered in Kosovo.
In the courtroom Harvey wasn't shy about expressing his admiration for the KLA; he praised KLA commander Lahi Brahimaj and compared him to Nelson Mandela. He told the court that Brahimaj shouldn't be found guilty; he should be found "brilliant".
While defending the KLA, Harvey argued that Serbs weren't trustworthy. He said, "Beyond the Serb forces rumor-mill, there is a disturbing lack of credible and reliable evidence." He disparaged what he called "those Serb intelligence documents upon which the Prosecution places so much reliance."
Of all the lawyers in the entire world, this is the guy the Tribunal found to "defend" a Serbian leader. This is the guy that's supposed to represent Radovan Karadzic and defend him in court. There isn't even a fig-leaf appearance of fairness for the Tribunal to hide behind. They literally went out and got a KLA lawyer from a NATO country to do the job. And this guy didn't even do a good job for the KLA; both of his clients got convicted.
The Hague Tribunal is a kangaroo court. Radovan Karadzic isn't being put on trial, he's being lynched.
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