WikiLeaks cables support criticism of ICTY judge

Judge Theodor Meron

Πηγή: globalpost
By AFP
June 18 2013

US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks appear to support claims by a Danish judge that the American head of the war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia furthered US administration aims to acquit senior suspects, a Danish newspaper said Tuesday.

Judge Frederik Harhoff last week claimed in a letter sent to his colleagues and leaked in the Danish press that the president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Theodor Meron, had pressured judges to acquit leading Croatian and Serbian officers.

US State Department cables from The Hague published by WikiLeaks appear to support his claim, including one from 2003 documenting a meeting between Meron and an unnamed US ambassador.

In the meeting, Meron allegedly pleaded for the US government to vote to terminate the mandate of then ICTY chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, describing her as "primarily a media person who is primarily interested in her own legacy".

"Meron urged the USG (US government) to oppose renewal and expressed reservations about a one-year extension of her mandate," the cable says of Del Ponte, who left court in 2008.

Denmark's leftwing independent daily Information, which revealed the existence of the US cables, said Del Ponte had "dragged out court cases and thus put obstacles in the way of the US and Russia to complete the work of the tribunal".

The paper said Harhoff believed that Meron pushed for court proceedings to be expedited in the interests of saving resources and winding up the work of the 20-year long legal process.

The ICTY was created in 1993 to try perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the the bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Serbs have frequently criticised the tribunal's perceived bias against their nationals, who were frequently convicted, while Croats, Bosniaks and Kosovars were acquitted.

A passage from another confidential cable later in 2003 on a meeting between Meron and another US ambassador identified the judge as "the tribunal's pre-eminent supporter of United States government efforts".

Information quoted an unnamed former legal advisor to the ICTY as saying the cables showed Meron had a close working policy relationship with the US government.

"It is the perception among my former colleagues that the tribunal president takes instructions from the US government. And the WikiLeaks documents certainly do not help his case," the advisor said.

In his letter, Harhoff claimed the acquittals of two Croatian generals -- Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac -- and three Serbs -- former Yugoslav army chief General Momcilo Perisic, Serbian state security service chief Jovica Stanisic and his deputy Franko Simatovic -- were contrary to the tribunal's set practice of holding military commanders responsible for crimes committed by subordinates.

Harhoff said the court was instead moving towards a policy that commanders could only be convicted if it could be proven that they knew of their subordinates' intention to commit crime.

Harhoff suggested that US or Israeli officials were involved in the acquittals.

The acquittals beg "the question of how this military logic pressures the international criminal justice system? Have any American or Israeli officials ever exerted pressure on the American presiding judge... to ensure a change of direction?" Harhoff wrote.

"We will probably never know.

"But reports of the same American presiding judge's tenacious pressure on his colleagues in the Gotovina-Perisic cases makes you think he was determined to achieve an acquittal -- and especially that he was lucky enough to convince the elderly Turkish judge to change his mind at the last minute," he added.

The only Turkish judge sitting at the ICTY is Mehmet Guney, 77.

"Most of the cases will lead to commanding officers walking free from here on. So the American (and Israeli) military leaders can breathe a sigh of relief," Harhoff wrote.

UN investigator suggests it was Syria's rebels who used chemical weapons

In this image taken from video, Syrian rebels clash with government forces in Damascus, Syria, Friday.

Πηγή: Christian Science Monitor
By Ariel Zirulnick
May 6 2013

Rebel forces denied the claims by Carla Del Ponte. The UN commission she leads emphasized today that the investigators had not yet reached conclusive findings.

The woman leading the UN investigation into possible chemical weapon use in Syria said yesterday that witness and victim testimonies indicate that Syrian rebels likely used chemical weapons such as the nerve gas sarin.

The commission she leads, however, tempered her comments with a statement today announcing that ithad not yet reached "conclusive findings." Rebel forces denied the claims.

“We do not have sarin gas and we do not aim to bring it under our control,” said Luai al-Mekdad, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, according to Deutsche Press Agentur.

“The Syrian regime has used the chemical weapons against civilians many times,” Maj. Gen. Adnan Sillo, a defector from the Syrian military who had headed a chemical warfare unit, told The New York Times. “Andthere is no doubt that the regime will use it more often, as this is its strategy in the war since the beginning of oppressing the uprising, to move gradually.”

Carla Del Ponte said on Swiss television yesterday that the UN investigators had "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof," of rebel use of chemical weapons, BBC News reports.

… Ms. Del Ponte, one of its commissioners, told Swiss-Italian TV: "Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals.

"According to their report of last week, which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated."
…
"I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got ... they were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition," she said.

However, the statement today by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, the UN investigating body, was far more cautious:

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic wishes to clarify that it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict. As a result, the Commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time.

The Chair of the Commission of Inquiry, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, reminds all parties to the conflict that the use of chemical weapons is prohibited in all circumstances under customary international humanitarian law.

In the statement, the commission noted that it will release all of its findings on June 3, as previously scheduled.

US and British inquiries into the same issue turned up evidence suggesting that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons. Ms. Del Ponte said yesterday that the UN commission's findings don't eliminate the possibility that the regime used them as well, but that the commission does not have evidence suggesting it, according to BBC.

Del Ponte is one of four investigators chosen by the UN Human Rights Council. The New York Times notes that it is unclear whether she was speaking only for herself or on behalf of the commission.

The BBC reports that Del Ponte's comments will frustrate US Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to convince Russia to support additional action against Syria, if he intended to argue chemical weapons use by the Assad regime to bolster his case. Secretary Kerry will be in Moscow this week.

A UN team has been organized specifically to investigate the chemical weapons claims, but it has demanded "unconditional access with the right to inquire into all credible allegations."

Slightly less than half of Americans would not want to take action even if the use of chemical weapons is proven.

According to a Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll conducted April 30 to May 4, 48 percent of Americans polled said they would rather the US take no military steps at all when asked, "If the Syrian government is found to have used chemical weapons against its own citizens, what level, if any military steps should the US take?" Just 8 percent said the US should commit troops to the conflict, 20 percent said the US should launch missile strikes or commit air power, and 12 percent said the US should help arm the rebels.

The Inetrnational Criminal Court and "the wall of silence".

In a recent post Mr. George Friedman writing for the Startfor Global Intelligence illustrates the dilemma between bringing Justice to the international arena utilizing the ICC and avoiding human casualties. The present arrest warrant for Qaddafi officially issued by the ICC "for crimes against humanity" as like Slobotan Milosevic' in the past renders any kind of peaceful resolution rather highly impossible living little room for negotiated settlements. "Having seen an older dictator at The Hague earlier negotiate his own exit, and see that negotiation fall through, why would a new dictator negotiate a deal? How can Gadhafi contemplate a negotiation that would leave him without power in Libya, when the Milosevic case clearly illuminates his potential fate at the hands of a rebel-led Libya? Judicial absolutism assumes that the moral absolute is the due process of law. A more humane moral absolute is to remove the tyrant and give power to the nation with the fewest deaths possible in the process" asserts Mr. Friedman.
I will ask then how far  is the ICC independent?

Carla Ponte the first celebrity prosecutor of the ad hoc created ICCY wrote her memoir along with New York Times journalist Chuck Sudetic who subsequently worked for the Soros' Open Society Institute where Ponte became a senior writer after taking a prise  from the Soros' founded Central European University (as did Kofi Annan) during the University's graduation ceremonies where last year the price were awarded for the thirteen subsequent year by the hand of the president of the International Crises Group which is also being supported by Soros. But ICC itself is also a Soros beneficiary as stated in this 2006 newletter: "The Prosecutors of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Carla Del Ponte, co-hosted the Third Prosecutors' Colloquium on the sixth and seventh of October 2006 in The Hague. The organizers are grateful to the Open Society Institute (OSI) for financial support in making the Colloquium possible." But as Carla is not the only person from the ICCY associated with the OSI since Patricia Wald a former judge of the tribune is listed in the Board of