What follows is the statement that
president Milosevic was not allowed to read when he appeared, August 30, 2001
before the "tribunal" in
STATEMENT
OF
PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
ON
THE ILLEGITIMACY OF
There are three fatal legal flaws in
the so called International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Each
has disastrous consequences for the human quest for peace, the rule of law,
democracy, truth and justice.
1.
THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT EMPOWER THE SECURITY COUNCIL TO
CREATE A CRIMINAL COURT
The U.N. Security Council has seized
power it does not possess, corrupting the Charter of the United Nations,
placing itself above the law and threatening "We Peoples of the United
Nations" with a lawless future in which a superpower employs the scourge
of war to have its way. Nothing in the history of the planning, drafting,
discussion, approval or ratifications of the U.N. Charter implies, or is
consistent with an intention to empower any body created by, or under, the
Charter to establish any criminal tribunal. The words of the Charter and their
textual inferences, the structure and allocation of power and duties, including
those in the incorporated Statute for the International Court of Justice, all negate
the existence of any capacity under the Charter to ordain criminal courts. The
Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia is illegitimate and its creation a
corruption of the United Nations.
There would never have been a United
Nations if its Charter stated, or implied, that a criminal court could be
created under its authority. No one who believes in historical truth, or that
words have meaning can, after examining the history of its creation and its
text, contend that the Charter of the United Nations empowers the Security
Council to create a criminal court.
An International Criminal Court Can Be Created
Only By A Multinational Treaty, Or
Amendment To The Charter Of The
United Nations
The national representatives ho have
served on the Security Council and in the General Assembly and the scholars,
lawyers and experts who have labored for more than thirty years to bring into
being an international criminal court have recognized that the only lawful and
binding way such a court can be created is by an agreement among nations
through a treaty agreed upon for that purpose, or by amending the Charter of
the United Nations under its strict provisions regulating amendments to
authorize, or establish a court.
When an International Criminal Court
was finally agreed upon in July 1998 by 120 nations meeting in
The
Creation Of The International
Criminal Tribunal
For The Former
Political Expediency By The
To Demonize And Destroy An Enemy
And Frustrate
Creation Of A Legitimate
International Criminal Tribunal
At the insistence of the U.S. the
Security Council nearly fifty years after it came into being forged a new and
powerful weapon capable of demonizing a nation and its people and depriving
individuals of their liberty for the rest of their lives and placed it largely
in the hands of the United States. The principal precedents for such pseudo
judicial actions over several millennia preceding the creation of the U.N. are
trials of leaders and soldiers of vanquished populations by the victors in war,
and courts used by colonial powers to control and punish subjugated peoples.
The precedents are many and the violence and cruelty and hatred they usually
exposed and caused was extreme.
Unless It is Limited By The U.N.
Charter And
International Law, The Security
Council Can Do
Whatever It Chooses To Do
If it is not restrained by the United
Nations Charter, the Security Council can commit any act it desires
disregarding all law. Early proponents of
"The Security Council is not a
body that
merely enforces agreed law. It is a law unto
itself... No principles of law are laid down
to guide it, it can decide in accordance with
what it thinks is expedient."
If unchallenged, this concept of
Security Council power means that the most powerful international organ created
by the Charter of the United Nations "to end the scourge of war" is
above all law, domestic and international.
But absolute discretion is the very
definition of lawlessness and has been called "more destructive of freedom
than any other of man's inventions," by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William
O. Douglas. All rights of all nations, races, religions, cultures, political
parties and individuals are thereby subordinated to the will of the Security
Council, and the single superpower that too often will dominate it. All but
fifteen nations are excluded from Security Council counsels. Each of the five
permanent members can veto its actions.
The Security Council is subject to
domination by a single nation. The representative of each member votes as
instructed by the national government that appoints him and to serve the
interests of that government, not as an international statesman serving all
peoples and the purposes for which the U.N. was created. The Security Council
is inaccessible, anonymous and less responsive to democratic processes than any
other international political institution.
2.
A ONE TIME, ONE EPISODE COURT TARGETING ONE COUNTRY, CREATED BY INTERNATIONAL
POLITICAL POWER TO SERVE ITS GEO-POLITICAL INTERESTS IS INCAPABLE OF EQUALITY
AND CONDUCTIVE OF DIVISION AND VIOLENCE
The illegitimate Criminal Tribunal for
Former Yugoslavia corrupts justice and law because it is incapable of acting
equally among nations, or within the politically targeted nation. It will
increase violence, division and the risk of war with neighboring nations and peoples
and within
If the Security Council can create a
criminal court to prosecute conduct in a single country like
By its very nature, the ad hoc
Tribunal can be created only after the conduct the Security Council decides
justifies creation of the Court since there is no other excuse for its
creation. It is in every case ex post facto. This violates an ancient
principle of law. It also requires the Security Council, if there is to be a
rational basis for its action, to make some preliminary claim to finding of
facts, a task such a political body is not designed for, that inherently
incriminates a country, or faction by placing the imprimatur of the Security
Council of the United Nations on a political decision of fact necessary to
justify creation of the Tribunal. The very charge of the Security Council -
genocide, crimes against peace, war crimes, or crimes against humanity
demonized any person thereafter accused.
The Selection Of A Nation For
Prosecution
On Political Findings Of Genocide,
War Crimes
And Crimes Against Humanity Creates
A Compulsion
to Convict.
Investigators, prosecutors and
administrative personnel who join a temporary Tribunal to pursue allegations of
humanities greatest crimes against a people and leaders already demonized will
feel they have failed if there are not convictions. The very psychology of the
enterprise is persecutorial. Few judges appointed to
serve on a Tribunal created under such circumstances will feel free to acquit
any but the most marginal, or clearly mistaken, accused, or to create an
appearance of objectivity.
Powers That Create Ad Hoc International Criminal
Tribunals Divert Attention From
Their Own
Offenses, Or Failures, Or Those Of
Allies And
Their Political Surrogates While Continuing
To Inflect And
Threaten Mass Destruction With Impunity.
The ad hoc Tribunal which
targets a country is incapable of prosecuting what may be greater crimes
committed in the same conflict, by a power, coalition ally or political agents
that was and remains a much greater source of violence and threat to peace.
Most often the power which forced the creation of the target
tribunal to further damage and demonize their enemy is shielded from
criticism by the avalanche of propaganda against the accused supported by the
appearance of United Nations neutrality and peace making efforts.
What court will consider the
criminality of aerial bombardment by U.S. aircraft of defenseless civilians,
their housing, water systems, power plants, factories, office buildings,
schools, hospitals, which take thousands of lives directly and causes billions
of dollars of property damages in Belgrade, Nis, Novi
Sad and scores of other cities, towns and villages? What threat to peace
continues from the
Who will be held accountable for the
devastation of Pristina by NATO planes, or the
attacks on refugee columns in Kosovo and Metohia? Is
the
International law accepts bombing of
defenseless civilian populations by a militarily advanced technology that can
destroy a country without even setting foot on its soil because supper power
controls international prosecutions and determines violations. The dominant
element in modern military power is mass destruction. Victors are nations with
the greatest capacity for mass destruction. This places civilian populations at
maximum peril infrastructure supporting civilian life, buildings, water, power,
transportation, communication, food production, storage and distribution,
health care, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, foreign embassies were the
direct object of
In 1998, the
NATO does not claim it prevented
violence within Kosovo and Metohia among the Serbian,
ethnic Albanian and other peoples. In fact, NATO accelerated that violence. It
bombed Serbia for 79 days targeting civilians and citizens destroying billions
of dollars worth of civilian facilities, using illegal weapons including cluster
bombs, destroying the civilian Serbian TV and radio buildings. It bombed Kosovo
and Metohia heaviest of all, destroying most of Pristina, killing thousands of Albanians, Muslims, Serbs,
Romany, Turks and others, and causing hundreds of thousands of people to flee
from Kosovo and Metohia. Damage to the Yugoslavia
military was negligible. In the summer of 2001 the U.S. continues to use
cluster bombs in northern and southern Iraq which it attacks on most days.
And in 1999 when the U.S. and NATO
countries came into Kosovo and Metohia, as a
"security force", they refused to intervene on the ground to protect
people who were endangered in the province.
There will be no remedy or relief for
Serbian victims of atrocities, some 500.000 purged by Croatia with the
approval, if not on instructions of the U.S., forever from their homes in Krajina, the more than 330.000 permanently purged from
Kosovo and Metohia since the cease fire in 1999, or
for the thousands of Serbs, Romany and others killed by the U.S. and NATO
bombing assaults, or by the U.S.-supported terrorist organization, the so
called KLA, before, during and after the assaults. The Macedonians killed,
injured and driven from their homes by U.S. condoned if not instigated KLA
aggressions which threaten civil war in Macedonia and general war in the
Balkans will not lead the Security Council to create a Court to prosecute the
perpetrators.
Major Powers Are Not Accountable For Their
Actions Which Cause War, Insurrection
And Violence Within Targeted
Countries.
There will be no accountability by the
U.S., Germany and other nations whose acts and pressures forced the break-up of
Yugoslavia, stripping Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia and attempted
stripping of parts of Serbia like Kosovo and Metohia.
The U.S. and several European nations
have balkanized the region in the most artificial and
forced apartheid the Balkans, or any other part of the world has ever known.
Their acts have made peace, stability and prosperity impossible. Economic
viability of small fragmented parts depends on foreign economic interests
intended to dominate and exploit the region. The new apartheid leads to
A
Set Against Each Other By Foreign Powers
Was Formed To Established Peace, Cooperation
And
Prosperity.
The idea of Yugoslavia, a Balkan
federation to heal divisions and provide a better chance for living together in
peace and prosperity, was seen as important in the years after World War I as a
means to peace. While the idea floundered between the two worst wars in
history, it worked with remarkable success after World War II in which it was
ravaged, but unconquered. An independent and unified Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia was a long term successful solution for south Slavic peoples. It was
a bulwark of the Non Aligned Movement. With the collapse of the Soviet and
Eastern bloc economy it was the remaining socialist government threatening
capitalist control of Europe. With its mixed market economy it offered an
example to former Eastern bloc countries for revival of their economic and
political independence. With a successful, functioning
After the collapse of the Eastern bloc
economy a greater Balkan federation a south eastern European Union was seen by
many in the region as the means to prevent economic exploitation, avoid
violence and develop a strong and independent political, social and economic
region.
Foreign capital and the geopolitical
interests of the
The
And Persecutes
Its Leadership.
The
Through economic sanctions, the most
extreme and overt form of forced impoverishment and economic assault, the U.S.
has coerced the Security Council into complicity in the longest deadliest and
cruelest genocide of the last decade, the sanctions against its enemy Iraq
which have killed at least 2 million people, the majority children. The
Can a criminal tribunal for Yugoslavia
which ignores pervasive violence by the U.S. and diverts public awareness from
United States conduct and legitimatizes by silent
acceptance aerial and missile assaults on civilians and illegal weapons use
against one country after another, making its repetition expected before it
occurs, contribute to the hope for the rule of law, justice or peace?
The
It cripples international environmental
protection, undermines control of nuclear weapons by threatening to withdraw
from long standing protections of the ABM and Non Proliferation treaties. It
refuses to ratify treaties to protect life from land mines which it continues
to manufacture, sell and deploy. It threatens to undermine a treaty controlling
biological and chemical warfare. And the
The so called ICTY is not just another
arrow in the arsenal of the
It is poisonous arrow destructive of
the foundations of peace among independent nations of equal rights and dignity.
3.
THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR FORMER
Such an ad hoc Tribunal has a
temporary and limited purpose without helpful precedent, common tradition or
relevant experience. It lacks power to enforce orders, or compel the disclosure
of evidence and presence of witnesses, particularly for the defense.
It is not capable of finding facts
fairly, or defining and applying legal principles equally. It cannot do
justice.
The statutory mandate for the ICTY
makes it hostile to concern for the rights of those accused before it, because
it is told the crimes charged have occurred and the accused have been
demonized.
The right to assistance of counsel, so
firmly established in international law, has been denied and frustrated by the
Tribunal even in its most prominent cases. The Registry denied to me the right
to consult with lawyers of my choice on legal matters for several weeks after
my arraignment.
The Registrar wrote that for the one
attorney who visited me during that time and for only two hours, it would have
been ''inappropriate'' to discuss the case because the conversation was
monitored and confidences would be violated. Lawyers from
Instead I was held in solitary
confinement. I was able to visit my wife only after more than two weeks
imprisonment and then only through sound proof glass using monitored
telephones. She was prohibited from speaking with the press and kept isolated
from all public contacts while in the Netherlands, a virtual prisoner in her
hotel room, except as she traveled between the airport, the prison and the
hotel.
The Ad Hoc Tribunal Is Intended To Demonize
And Destroy, Not To Fairly Determine Facts,
Protect Rights Of The Accessed, And
Apply
Legal
Principles Equally.
Unfair phenomena is inherent in the
purpose and the nature of temporary ad hoc tribunal, struggling without
personnel who are part of a legal tradition, far removed from the place the
accused came from and the events occurred where the court is charged by its
creator not to presume innocence, but that terrible crimes have occurred and
the accused are from the group that committed them. They do this to protect thr real criminals, the NATO leaders who killed thousands
of innocent people in NATO's criminal aggression.
Truth Is Beyond The Reach And The
Purpose Of
The Ad Hoc Tribunal Which Is Intended To
Punish, Destroy And Divide.
It has been impossible in all cases
before powerless ad hoc Tribunals for the accused to obtain needed
evidence and witnesses for their defense. The ICTY has been unable to obtain
custody of many accused in the former
Ad Hoc Tribunal Terrorize And
Punish Those In
Oppose NATO Aggression And To React
To Criminal Acts Of Terrorists Who Were
Killing Serbs,
Albanians, Muslims, Turks etc.
In
The
Forcing Elections, Using Millions Of
Dollars
to Purchase
Unity For Its Candidate , Then
Finance A Campaign That Buys Votes And
Corrupts
Democracy.
The
The
The creation of an ad hoc
international criminal tribunal with threats and indictments of the leadership
of the government it seeks to remove is an additional devastating assault on
the democratic process and the government targeted for destruction.
My Abduction and Surrender To The
ICTY By A
Was Done In Violation Of The
Constitutions Of The
Of
While The Federal Constitutional
Court Of
For A Bribe Of, Supposedly, 1.3 Billion
Dollars.
The U.S.-installed government of Serbia
abducted and surrendered me in violation of the Constitutions of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia and its Laws while the
request for surrender was under review by the Constitutional Court of
Yugoslavia, which had forbiden any act related to
surrender until the Court's final decision. That was also a violation of the
U.N. Security Council Resolution creating the Tribunal which provides that
surrender shall be accomplished in accordance with the domestic laws of the
nation requested to make the surrender. The
The illegal seizure of an individual
and his delivery to isolation in the prison of an illegal international
criminal tribunal in a distant nation threatens the freedom of everyone. For
the United Nations to engage in, or accept, international kidnapping of
political leaders tells that world the old ways of violence, deceit and
coercion are its ways. Those ways will be met in the only way they can be met,
by the same means.
The New
Is Using Its Police Power To Crush
Political
Opposition In
The current government of
That government may fabricate evidence,
destroy evidence and control and coerce witnesses to assist in convictions by
the ICTY, and it will seek to frustrate defense efforts to obtain documents,
other evidence, and witnesses in
The People Of
Tragic Future From The External
Manipulation
And Control Of Their Governments.
The new government of
Ask the people of the several score
other countries who have lived under
Consider the peoples of the poorest
countries of the world during these last decades obediently struggling to repay
loans for projects and purposes they did not choose and that never benefited
them while their own citizens die from hunger and preventable illnesses.
Consider the economies of eastern Europe, or of the former Yugoslav republics
and ask why per capita income is often less than half, sometimes less than 25%
what it was just twelve years ago. Ad hoc criminal tribunals will
prolong the suffering in poor countries by supporting governments that will
maintain foreign domination that seeks benefits that will worsen that
condition.
The Violence And Division Within
Since The Collapse Of The Soviet
Economy Was
Caused By
The
Republics With The ICTY As
Principal Weapon.
The United States engaged in a decade
long effort aided by several European countries, to break-up and destroy the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, causing the secession, (remember the American
Civil War) of German oriented Slovenia and Croatia with 500 000 Serbs purged
from its borders. Then
The ICTY was created at the insistence
of the
Now as the idea and existence of ad
hoc tribunals are threatened by the treaty creating the International
Criminal Court the
The
For these reasons, the so called ICTY
should be declared illegal and its prisoners, legally and illegally
surrendered, should be released.
August 30, 2001