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Karadzic Case Offers Court a Chance to Repair Its Image
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Biljana Kovacevic, a lawyer who runs a human rights group in Belgrade, blamed much of the public anger directed at the tribunal on "propaganda" by political elites trying to protect themselves and their allies. "There has been too much propaganda, but I think there's real momentum for people to accept that crimes were committed in our name," she said. "The worst crimes were committed by the Serbian side and we have to face that."
She said she believed the tribunal would handle the Karadzic case better than the Milosevic case. "It is a new challenge for them," she said. "But I have a good feeling it is not going to be a repeat."
The tribunal is scheduled to shut down in 2011, but spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said its life would surely be extended to deal with the Karadzic case and those of the two fugitives, should they be caught.
But the court would not need to continue operating in its large headquarters in The Hague, where visitors can buy tribunal baseball caps, T-shirts and coffee mugs. Nor would it have to continue employing so many people.
Russia proposed last month that the tribunal, and a second U.N.-affiliated body dealing with crimes against humanity committed in Rwanda, be closed next year. Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, said the prosecutions should be turned over to national courts. "We do not see why those countries should be denied their sovereign right of exercising national justice," he said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Anastasijevic called the Russian proposal unrealistic. "National courts in post-conflict countries cannot cope with the most serious war criminals," he said. In his view, the tribunal has proved that international courts are the proper venue for those cases.
"The flaws of the tribunal, and they were serious flaws, should not kill the idea of international justice," he said.
Finn reported from Belgrade.
