We will soon be lucky enough to learn the answer to one of the few remaining mysteries of the Yugoslav Tribunal at the Hague. At this point it is entirely irrelevant how you choose to call it, ICTY or The Mechanism (the latter being the official, sinister-sounding name of its final incarnation). The issue concerns the appellate judgement in the case of General Ratko Mladic, commander of Serbian forces in the 1992 – 1995 Bosnian war. He stands accused, and in the trial verdict was found guilty, of the long list of usual heinous offences, topped by genocide and Srebrenica, that a person of his stature and ethnicity would normally have to face at the Hague Tribunal. On June 8, at the end of the appellate phase of the proceedings, we shall find out what the appeals chamber think about it.

The interesting thing about Mladic’s appellate chamber is that, in contrast to past practice, it is not composed of “good ole boys” drawn mostly from NATO countries. It is a chamber whose complexion, at least since the surprisingly successful recusal in 2016 of good ole boys Meron, Agius and Pocar, after a defence complaint of bias, BLM would probably approve (though the unsuspected presence of Uncle Toms can never be entirely discounted). Still, the new set of Mladic appellate chamber judges have solid Third World credentials. How that will impact their ruling, we shall soon find out.

But by far the most interesting member of this group is its presiding judge, Zambian jurist Prisca Matimba. In 2012 she sat on the trial chamber of General Mladic’s right-hand man, General Zdravko Tolimir, whom the majority found guilty and packed off to life imprisonment. Mrs. Matimba, however, sent shock waves by composing a fascinating dissenting opinion in which she compellingly argued that there was no evidence of Gen. Tolimir’s guilt on any of the charges laid against him (see chapter XIII of Judgment) and that instead of being sent to prison the defendant should be sent home. In the best British legal tradition, Zambian judge Matimba turned the tables. She supported her conclusion with a brilliant legal analysis reinforced by a panoply of lethally formulated First World arguments. But her singlehanded bravado performance failed to make even the slightest dent in her majority colleagues’ determination to reach a diametrically opposite result. Nevertheless, she in effect demolished not just her fellow-judges’ legal findings in the Tolimir trial but implicitly thrashed her institutional employer, the Hague Tribunal, as well.

Theoretically, on June 8 judge Matimba could tweak the Tribunal’s tail again by repeating her memorable 2012 performance. There is no ostensible reason for her to now take a different position in the Mladic case. Not only are all the basic charges the same as against Tolimir but, more importantly, so is the evidence, for whatever it is worth. Major witnesses are much the same and the crime base, as alleged by the prosecution, is also virtually identical, certainly in the key segments of genocide and Srebrenica. But before getting one’s expectations too high, worth pondering is the career of another ICTY judge, Christoph Flügge, who also briefly got out of line and then had to fight hard for “rehabilitation” (meaning job, salary and benefits).

Following the apprehension of Radovan Karadzic, Flügge was appointed a pre-trial judge in that case. But in 2009, in an inexplicable outburst of nonconformism, he told Der Spiegel that the term “genocide” in his view was no longer judicially viable: “Which is why I believe that we should consider devising a new definition of the crime. Perhaps the term mass murder would eliminate some of the difficulties we face in arriving at legal definitions. It would also work in Cambodia, where Cambodians killed large numbers of Cambodians. What do you call that? Suicidal genocide? Sociocide?” Still, as a properly repentant German, he concluded his academic musings on this delicate subject by maintaining that “strictly speaking, the term genocide only fits the Holocaust”.

But it turned out that the Tribunal would have none of Flügge’s new definitions and Massenmoerder nonsense because it understands all too well the nature of its overriding political task. It is to aim straight for the jugular, which in plain terms is genocide. After this incautious interview, Flügge promptly vanished from the Karadzic pre-trial panel. It is a matter of speculation in which political re-education camp judge Flügge spent the next year or so of his life (the ones in Xinjiang had not yet been officially opened) but after some time he emerged as a totally new and right-thinking man. He even apparently managed to regain a modicum of his employers’ trust, which included the privilege of serving on the Mladic trial chamber. And after his remarkable genocide epiphany he was happy to sign the verdict, in which the “genocide” charge evidently no longer bothered his delicate conscience.

The Flügge precedent is therefore something well to keep in mind when calibrating expectations from judge Prisca Matimba, without derogating in the least from the significance of her extraordinary dissenting opinion in the Tolimir case. No matter what, that will remain a unique and inspiring expression of professional integrity and can still be inhaled as a rare breath of fresh air in the miasmic swamp of the Hague Tribunal.

On June 8, General Ratko Mladic’s appointed judgment day, we will find out if there are any limits to the power of the Hague Tribunal to reengineer recalcitrant human souls. Should it succeed in whipping into line even the brave Zambian lady and superb legal professional Prisca Matimba, that will come as a sad disappointment indeed but also as another ringing confirmation of the inherent fallenness of human nature.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) last Thursday (August 25^th) held another court hearing on the case of Gen Ratko Mladic, following almost two months of lull since the last hearing in late June. But summer vacation is not the only thing to explain such a long pause. In fact, the events unfolded in quite an unpleasant way.

Last week`s hearing focused mainly on the prosecution`s appeal to split the indictment against Mladic in two separate trials: to first try him for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, for which he is accused of genocide in the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, and of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and holding UN peacekeepers hostage. The prosecution said this would speed up the trial. Certainly, it would. But this will play into the hands of the prosecution only, not the defence. Mladic has only one lawyer, who simply cannot prepare for two trials at once. Apart from this, the prosecution is known for providing loads of the so-called 'indictment data' ( a billion of pages, if you please), most of them simply unnecessary during the trial. However, all these materials should be studied by the defence, which takes all their time.

But what deserves special attention here is that in case the trail is split in two parts, the meaning of the indictment gets changed. Originally, it was stated that all crimes included in the case resulted from joint conspiracy. But now, 12 years on, the prosecution has suddenly changed its position: now they say Mladic joined one conspiracy for 'entire Bosnia' and also a separate conspiracy 'on Srebrenica only'. How come? Apparently, the prosecutors yet have not agreed what exactly they want Mladic to be tried for!

Apart from other things, the prosecution said that two separate trials were needed in view of the fact that Mladic has 'health problems'. Does not this mean that the ICTY knows something that may halt the trial any minute, so they want to sentence Mladic at all costs? However, if things go differently, long proceedings in Mladic trial will just mean that judges and prosecutors will receive more salaries. The situation will get even more complicated after the ICTY transfers its responsibilities to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) which will begin functioning for the CITY branch on 1 July 2013. But there is an important proviso which says that although the ICTY is due to pass over its duties to IRMCT in 2013, it will still be allowed to deal with cases until the end of 2014. The date was set not as a 'deadline' but as a 'request to do everything possible to complete all tasks on time'.

Russiahas always stressed during the UNSC meetings that the cases of Karadzic and Mladic should not be viewed as grounds for extending the ICTY mandate. But things are unlikely to go this way because if the Mladic trial starts on July 1^st 2013 and fails to finish by 31^st December 2014, the ICTY cannot cease to exist, otherwise new court proceedings will be required. However, this may be what some judges at Hague are looking for.

A few days before the August 25 court hearings Mladic underwent surgery. The details were not disclosed. Even Mladic`s lawyer Branko Lukic said that he did not know much of the details but was informed that the surgery went well. However, it was made known by the ICTY that Mladic did not leave the Scheveningen Prison, which means that the operation took place there, despite the fact that surgeries are usually not performed in prisons. The question is why Mladic was treated at a prison hospital? Probably, the ICTY was afraid that he could have escaped on his way to a hospital. By the way, Mladic is transported from one place to another with a mask on his face to prevent him from looking around. Very 'democratic', isn`t it? But it appears to be more likely that the ICTY simply does not want Mladic to be examined by other doctors. If we look back at how Slobodan Milosevic was tried, we`ll understand that the ICTY knows what doctors to address to achieve their goals. Still, it is evident that now the ICTY has decided not to take similar risks with Mladic. In view of the decision to split the indictment in two trials, this evokes concerns.

We`ve got used to the fact that all high-profile trials at the ICTY are held with active participation of the defendants: Milosevic, Vojislav Šešelj, Radovan Karadzic. In thiscase, a suspect defends himself on his own (but this had not always been this way: it took Šešelj 30 days of hunger strike to win the right to defend himself). But things will go differently with Mladic: he will be present at the hearings but won`t be allowed to make any comment.

Actually, this holds true for all cases considered at the ICTY, but we have not known much about this because most cases there do not receive wide media coverage. A defendant is allowed to speak only if he is also a witness in his case (which is quite a challenging and risky procedure) or if he directly asked by court. The problem is that a defendant is never asked about anything!A dialogue is held between a judge and a lawyer. For instance, Vidoje Blagojević, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison forcrimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war committed against Bosnian Muslims in the area of Srebrenica in July 1995, spend several months asking for the right to talk during the proceedings but in vain. The same thing is likely to happen to Gen Mladic. Actually, during the first hearing Mladic said (and was heard despite a switched off microphone) that he had not receive any indictment act, his lawyer when asked whether his client understood the charges he was facing, responded positively.

What is also notable for the Mladic trial is that the prosecution insisted that the names of all witnesses in the case should be disclosed 'for safety reasons', in addition to that- neither the defendant nor his lawyer were allowed to know where those witnesses came from! What for? First, to create a negative image of the defendant and his lawyer, and secondly- to disclose the real place of residence of witnesses which can tell quite a lot. Thus, one witness from Bosnia was given a flat in Norway. Apparently, this was not for free…

To sum up, I`d like to say that two months since Gen Ratko Mladic was arrested, the ICTY has done everything possible to not allow a Russian lawyer join the proceedings. The ICTY explained this by saying that criticism coming from Russian lawyer Alexander Mezyaev is 'hostile' towards the Tribunal and 'might result in the loss of public confidence in the ICTY'. The Tribunal used this wording to reject Mr. Mezyaev`s appeal to defend Mladic. But the Hague officials seem to be unwilling to look into the roots of this criticism. Secondly, the prosecution has been looking for any possible ways to deprive the defence of the right to have enough time to prepare for the hearings. Finally, efforts are being made to make the trial 'closed' to public. And only those will be described as 'truthful witnesses' who go from one trial to another testifying but in fact did not see anything with their own eyes. Meanwhile, the names of those who allegedly witnessed the crime, won`t be unveiled. Above all this, a possibility is being discussed to hold a more speedy court hearing on one of the indictments in the Mladic case, allegedly 'to let justice rule'.

The elimination of “terrorist N1” magically coincided with the murder of younger son and three grandchildren of Colonel Gaddafi. The killing of Gaddafi’s grandchildren (who were not mentioned in the resolution of UN Security Council of 1973) could lead to a great scandal and it was necessary to cover it up. That is why the US special services remembered bin Laden who had died a long ago and filled up all TV channels with the breaking news of his elimination. The world has a reason to celebrate and Gaddafi’s grandchildren are not so important. The Justice has been served. Of course, such mystifications are not faultless. Unlike the USSR the US is not experienced in mummification of the dead political leaders and it failed to produce the dead body of bin Laden to the global audience. There is every likelihood, that the man the US troops hunted in Pakistan had been dead for a long time. But the US which regards the global audience as a crowd of fools said that the photos of the dead terrorist were so frightening that they should be shown to the public and the dead bin Laden has already been thrown into the sea. He is no more and that is the end of the line.

Funnily enough, but many Americans believed that crap. Bin Laden was thrown into the sea – OK. He was thrown there to good purpose – nobody speaks about Gaddafi’s grandchildren anymore.

Rascals have no nationality. If earlier the world appreciated the Serbian feeling of honor and love for freedom these things cannot be attributed to the new pro-Western rulers of Serbia and the Serbian special services. This another kind of people.

How could they search for and seize the Serbian national hero Ratko Mladic?

How could they order Mladic’s extradition to the tribunal in the Hague?

How could they torture the general in prison turning him into a disabled person?

Do you believe that they really found Ratko Mladic in the village of Lazorevo where he was hiding for many years? Come on!

The Serbian special services were hunting for Mladic all the time. They regularly searched the house of the general’s son and the house in the village of Lazorevo – these two locations had always been in focus. During those searches they confiscated everything – money, computers, communication devices (without return). Wherever he went Mladic’s son Darko was always spied upon a car with satellite antennas let alone the agents. In the village of Lazorevo where close relatives of Mladic live – Branco Mladic (the general’s brother) and his sons the house checks were conducted one after another. It is a lie that Mladic secretly lived there or visited that place. By the way the Serbian special services work quite rough they did not even try to make it more believable. The photos of Mladic published in mass media prove it: on the first photo his hair is very short and several hours later when he is brought to the court the hair is much longer. It was quite warm in the street but the general on the photo always wore a warm coat even after the arrest.

Two photos taken at place of his arrest are also different. Different place on every photo.

Ratko Mladic was the man of good health and suddenly – such a change.

His right arm is not functioning the reports about the number of his heart attacks and blood hemorrhages vary (two blood hemorrhages and three heart attacks or vise versa but in any case several heart attacks and blood hemorrhages in a short period of time).

There was also a report that he has serious problems with kidneys, that he is completely washed out. His speech is delirious. His lawyer says that the general has lost the sense of time and space.

Such things do not come about in itself. A sudden, unexplained refusal of life-important organs can be only a result of serious violent impact. It is obvious that Mladic was arrested along time ago. He was secretly kept in prison (supposedly on the US base Bondsteel in Kosovo). It is likely that they gave him drugs either to make him speak or to deliberately destroy his personality. In any case we can speak about TORTURES.

It is difficult to say if the Serbian special services applied the US experience of tortures In Guantanamo to Radko Mladic or they used less sophisticated kind of tortures but there is at least one thing we can “congratulate” the executors with – they have managed to fit the community of the “civilized” Western special services…

* * *

It was clear from the outset that the Serbian pro-Western ruling coalition with president B. Tadic at the helm would not dish out Mladic to the ICTY, thus sacrificing national interests and pride to the West. The arrest and extradition of R. Karadzic, formerly the president of the Serbian republic in Bosnia, and Belgrade’s thinly disguised drift towards a de facto reconciliation over Kosovo killed any illusions that the Serbian administration might defy the West’s pressure on any serious issue. As an eloquent gesture, Tadic’s team largely trained by Western PR gurus back in the late 1990ies synchronized the arrest of Mladic with the opening of the G8 summit and the tours of Serbia by EU delegations led by two Brussels dignitaries – one by President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso, another – by High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton. If the plan was to impress, the attempt must be credited with success: almost simultaneously, French President N. Sarkozy happily broke the news in Deauville and Barroso, just back from Belgrade, acknowledged the receipt by the EU of a “positive message” from Serbia.

Still, the hype around Mladic’s arrest and extradition to the Hague do not mean that Serbia’s invitation to the EU is on the way. Sarkozy, Barroso,and Ashton alike praised the move as the country’s another step – one of quite a few left- towards reaching the goal. Estimates of the time it will take Serbia to earn a EU membership converge on 6-7 years during which the country will have to respond to a whole array of demands. The West’s wish list includes the arrest and extradition of former leader of Croatia’s Serbs Goran Hadzic, the recognition of the independence of Kosovo, and the tailoring of Serbia’s own statehood aimed at boosting regional autonomies to the point of converting the country into a conglomerate of loosely linked territories. The pressure on Serbia over the Kosovo theme will likely top the EU Balkan agenda in the nearest future, but generally the spectrum of EU requirements Belgrade must face will be widening non-stop.

Given its current condition, the EU obviously has more pressing issues to deal with than accommodating Serbia. The West needs Serbia only as a perpetually rogue state whose very existence helps justify the NATO intervention in the Yugoslavian crisis in the early 1990ies, the 1999 ruthless bombings of the country, the staunch support for the cause of the Kosovo separatism, and the military presence of NATO, the US, and the EU in the strategic Balkans. Serbia’s pro-Western political forces make playing the game easier for the West but – no matter what concessions they lead the country to make – do not help it gain a status comparable to those of other EU hopefuls. As a result, Serbia’s chances to be admitted to the EU – with Mladic at large or with Mladic sold, even with or without Tadic – are nonexistent.

Instead, what the extradition to the Hague of key Serb figures wanted by the tribunal affects is the situation around embattled countries like Libya and Syria. For example, the arrest of Mladic whom the West accepted as a legitimate negotiation partner when the 1995 Dayton deal was in the making, further makes the legitimacy of the status of any sovereign country leader dependent on geopolitical dynamics rather than on the corresponding nation’s political choice. Moscow should be mindful of the above now that the West is offering it to mediate in the conflict with Libya.

A day after the arrest of Mladic, the G8 summit upheld in a chorus the view that Gadhafi was illegitimate as the leader of Libya. The summit’s declaration additionally called into question the legitimacy of Libya’s entire administration. At the same time, Russia’s summit partners secured the consent of Moscow to mediate in the Libyan settlement. Mediation in talks with a country leader a priori declared illegitimate is a mission unheard of in the history of diplomacy. Even the stories of the negotiations on Bosnia and Kosovo did not have to unfold in such an absurd framework.

Mladic and Karadzic , both immensely popular in the Serbian Republic in Bosnia, were instrumental in bringing the Dayton accords to the signing phase. In 1999, S. Milosevic was given guarantees – sealed by Russia, importantly – that the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo would materialize under the UN flag and that, contrary to NATO’s wishes, the international forces deployed in Kosovo would not be authorized to move around the rest of Yugoslavia. Neither the world’s key powers nor NATO officially put the regime change in Belgrade on the agenda at the time of the penning of the June 9, 1999 Yugoslavia-NATO military-technical deal, the passing of the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, or the deployment of KFOR. Nevertheless, the charges over Kosovo pressed against Milosevic – strikingly similar to those currently leveled against Gadhafi – became the basis of the indictment eventually produced in the Hague. No official document carried the idea that the allegations could somehow erode Milosevic’s legitimacy, it should be noted.

In other words, at the moment Gadhafi cannot expect to be given by NATO or Russia even the guarantees like those Milosevic received as part of the package ending the air strikes on Belgrade. Unlike Karadzic and Mladic in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he will not get a role in the settlement in Libya. Among other things, the above means that over the past decade the West’s architects of the new world order gained the ability to implement their plans concerning crises in various parts of the globe without Russia’s backing or pretending to back them. As of today, Moscow in the case of Libya – is supposed to simply throw its support behind Washington’s and Brussels’ blueprints in which no workable negotiating mechanisms are even mentioned. In 1999, The Boston Globe wrote that, somewhat surprisingly, prevalence in crises like the Kosovo one relying solely on air raids was possible. These days, the view is commonplace in NATO, and the list of country leaders – those ranging from Syria and Iran to Pakistan and North Korea – whose legitimacy can be annulled in a single move counts quite a few candidates. In fact, it is long enough to handle one country per G8 summit…

It is an open secret that Mladic’s arrest and extradition to the Hague Tribunal was set by the West as a price Belgrade was supposed to pay for the entry ticket to the EU. There was also a legal requirement, much more serious than just Serbian non-admission to the EU.

In February 2007 the UN International Court of Justice passed a resolution charging Serbia with violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. One of the articles of the resolution stated that Serbia breached the conventions by not extraditing Mladic. With the predictable exception of the Serbian judge, all other judges of the Court voted in favor of the article. The resolution was essentially irrational as Mladic’s wasn’t arrested in Serbia, his location was unknown and the Court had no evidence that Mladic was in Serbia at that time. Nevertheless, as the failure to comply with the UN Court of Justice’s decisions may result in sanctions being imposed on any country, Belgrade had to be mindful of this possibility ever since.

In a stark breach of the key norms of the international law, the Hague Tribunal indicted Mladic in absentia back in July, 1996. Article 61 of the ICTY Rules of Procedure and Evidence admits a special procedure to issue international arrest warrants, when the indictment is being heard without presence of the accused or his advocate. Formally, an «advocate» – one appointed by the court, not chosen by the accused – does take part in the hearing process. In July, 1996, the Hague Tribunal decided that there was enough evidence to consider R. Karadzic and R. Mladic guilty of heinous international crimes. Subsequently this ‘special procedure’ allowed the ICTY to use Mladic’s name as the ‘evidence’ against a number of other accused.

At the early days of the Hague Tribunal, it adopted the legal concept of ‘joint criminal enterprise’. The judicial innovation paved way to serial indictments of Serbs and was evidently invented to enable sentencing people whose personal involvement (or even awareness) in these acts could not be proven.

The first version of the indictment against Mladic was endorsed back in 1995. Curiously, the judge who penned it — F. Riad, a Muslim from Egypt — was biased to the point of making the indictment more severe than originally requested by the prosecutor. An in-depth comparison between the indictment put together by the prosecution and the one amended by the judge highlights F. Riad’s creative approach to the case. For example, he inserted a passage explaining that captives were executed in small groups, which — as opposed to a single mass execution — was to demonstrate that the massacre was not spontaneous but carefully planned. F. Riad also indicated a longer period of time over which the executions continued than did the prosecution in its original indictment.

The case against Mladic endured several amendments. At the beginning, it was filed together with the one against Karadzic, but was detached from it when Karadzic was taken into custody in 2009. The last substantial changes in the indictment against Mladic were supposed to date back to 2002, but further details have recently surfaced. Evidently, the text was subjected to a fairly radical amendment … on May 10, coincidentally, a couple of weeks prior to the capture of Mladic. The edited indictment was approved by Alfons Ori from the Netherlands, the same judge who signed the 2002 case against Mladic. Notably, Mr. Ori is known for his toughness towards Serbs and inexplicable mercifulness to Albanians with Serbs’ blood on their hands. He sentenced several Serbs, mostly from Bosnia, including former speaker of National Assembly of the Republika Srpska M. Krajisnik and acquitted e.g. R. Haradinaj, a notorious Albanian butcher. No doubt, those who want Mladic to be convicted can rely on Mr. Ori.

Importantly, now Mladic is charged with four ‘joint criminal enterprises’ instead of one. The first one is the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Croats and Muslims in Bosnia, which was qualified as genocide by the court. Other ‘enterprises’ were presumably ‘committing acts of terror’ against civilians in Sarajevo, taking UN personnel hostages in May-June, 1995, and Srebrenica ‘genocide’ in July 1995. The latest indictments carries 11 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and violations of the laws and customs of war.

Close scrutiny of the indictment against Mladic reveals that it lacks elementary coherence. For example, Mladic is accused of occupying Srebrenica and killing its civilians, but judging by the alleged dates of the beginning and the end of the siege — from July 2 till July 11 – it remains unclear why did this operation take 10 days. The only plausible explanation is that Srebrenica was a heavily fortified stronghold of armed resistance or anything but a ‘peaceful location’. This fact is admitted in the indictment, but all those killed during the seizure of Srebrenica are nevertheless listed as civilians by the Hague Tribunal. With this regard, frequent references to «Muslim boys and men» in the indictment may only be seen as an attempt to overstate the civilian theme, putting the objectivity of the whole act in question.

Strictly speaking, even this indictment contains evidence that Mladic acted in line with the humanitarian law applicable to armed conflicts. For example, removing the population from the combat zone should be regarded as compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the Protection of Victims of (Article 50) and Protocol II Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts(Article 17) rather than as a crime against civilians.

The situation with figures looks no better. The 8,000 death toll recurs in former ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte’s memoirs, though she certainly knows that the number in the indictment is 7,000. The media similarly keep mentioning 8,000 killed in Srebrenica. Suspiciously, the figure has a tendency to grow year by year, even though there is a bulk of evidence that these quantities have nothing to do with reality. Whenever new burial sites are discovered, the bodies inside are only of combatants.

L. Simic who studied the corpses unearthed in Srebrenica presented convincing evidence to a conference on the ICTY organized by the Russian Academy of Science that all those buried — at most 1,500 people – were combatants, not civilians. At the same conference, Zh. Civikov, a scholar from Bulgaria, presented an extensive analysis of the Court’s evidence in the Srebrenica case. His 2010 book ‘The Key Witness’ vividly exposed the ICTY forgeries concerning the alleged Srebrenica ‘genocide’.

There is further evidence that the charges massively brought up against Bosnia’s Serbs are based on total lies. Due to obvious reasons, some of the European countries maintain legislation explicitly outlawing any arguments against facts of genocide recognized by the UN International Court, even if evidence to support the arguments is available. The range of punishments for the offense includes imprisonment, while the evidence is to be rejected without deliberation.

As for the indictment against Mladic — it is an absolutely slanderous and unprofessionally written document…

The entire world is singing hallelujah to the victory over the criminal of global proportions. In Sarajevo, he was called “a Hitler Nazi”; in Zagreb, the murderer of hundreds of Croats; Turkey demands that he be immediately executed, while Australian television tells their audiences about the way he made parents eat their own children.

Serbian politicians are jubilant on the assumption that they have surmounted the last barrier on their way “to Europe”, but the independent Serbian news media point to the dark side of and betrayal by the disgraced top-echelon politicians. Serbian patriots take to the streets in many cities, marketplaces is where the arrest of Mladic is currently being discussed and assessed, and you will never hear a word of approval of the authorities’ move! Belgrade remains packed with police, which means that the government is aware of how the people feel about their betrayal.

The world is gushing and exulting with joy without bothering to fathom out the essence of what is happening. People have barbaric notions cudgelled into their heads that Serbs are guilty of all that happened in the Balkans. Few will really know of actual occurrences. We studied the events in the Balkans; we know documented facts, political and military leaders, and the chronology of developments; we do know what actually happened during the breakup of Yugoslavia, and we wrote a lot about General Mladic and his inner circle. We are also aware of the political reasons for setting up the Tribunal, and of the anti-Serbian campaign, launched by many European and world centres.

The struggle that is being waged around the General is a struggle of good and evil, of patriotism and treachery, loyalty to one’s duty and unscrupulousness, military honour and disgrace. Ratko Mladic has long since become legend… The Daily Telegraph has included him on the list of 30 best-known military leaders of this day and age, adding in a comment that many army officers who had talks with him see him as a genius of tactics, albeit a “madman”. Throughout the war, politicians, reporters and, above all, the military, – the blue-beret peacekeepers, tried hard to secure a meeting with him. The enemy feared him, while Serbs idolized him for his reputation for honest dealing, military professionalism, courage and fidelity to his country, and also humaneness. Mladic often said that his guiding principles were dignity, honour, faith and freedom. Whenever the General could, he saved people, whether Serbs, or Croats, or Muslims.

I met the General on several occasions. He has a memory like sponge and knows a lot about Russian poets and writers. Ratko Mladic is a wonderful storyteller. He graphically reproduced the details of a dinner with an English lord, of his meeting with a US military attaché on the staircase of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, and conversations with French Generals. He is simple to deal with, he is clever, well-educated, knows his worth, he is a high-calibre military professional, and yet his life philosophy is akin to that of an ordinary peasant. His life philosophy is quite simple: the people of Serbia went through untold suffering throughout their history, survived genocide on several occasions but always forgave their malefactors, and were kind and well-wishing with regard to their neighbours. The Serbs had never actually believed that the tragedy might repeat itself. In that war, the people of Serbia are again suffering, are again subjected to genocide. “I will do my best to prevent this from ever happening again. The Serbian people in Bosnia-Herzegovina will live in an independent state”. When I talked about him with his officers and men, I realized that they not just liked him, but actually idolized him. His war-fighting skills instilled hope in Bosnian Serbs for the creation of their own state. And that is precisely how it all worked out. Today Respublika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina is around thanks only to the policy of Radovan Karadzic and the war-fighting skills of General Ratko Mladic. His troops’ love for him and his entire people’s strong belief in him made him convinced of his right cause.

I am very sorry that today’s Serbian government has, in a bid to please those who destroyed and tried to do away with Yugoslavia, organized a round-up of the man whom it should have glorified as a national hero, described as the winner and seen as a true defender of Fatherland.

The purpose of the unseemly move is clear, with all Serbian political quarters elaborating on it since the arrest of Mladic. Today’s Belgrade is prepared to extradite Mladic in exchange for Serbia’s EU membership. My foot it gets it. The Europeans and Americans have still many conditions up their sleeve that Belgrade will be urged to meet shortly. One of these is recognition of the independence of Kosovo. Several days ago, the US Ambassador to Kosovo, Christopher Dell, said that accepting the reality of an independent Kosovo is a precondition for considering Serbia’s joining the European Union. This will be followed by a whole list of other conditions, such as the independence of Vojvodina, autonomy for Serbia’s southern districts, joining NATO etc. etc.

Later that day, May 26^th, an inquisitor attempted to investigate the General, but had to suspend his effort due to Mladic’s poor health condition. The Mladic family lawyer, Milos Salic, points out that Ratko Mladic has suffered three strokes and two heart attacks, his right armed is paralyzed, and his kidneys are failing, according to some reports. His family demands that a medical commission be set up (of doctors from Russia only!), and that Mladic be admitted to the Military Medical Academy.

But hearings nonetheless resumed in the daytime on May 27^th. Prior to that, 5 doctors of the Belgrade district prison examined Mladic and decided that he could take part in legal proceedings. The war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said cynically that the main thing is that Mladic understands what is going on.

Serbs were shocked by the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The very same day, May 26^th, Belgrade saw spontaneous protests by very young people who did not fight in the 1990s. Larger-scale protests erupted in Republika Srpska, and its capital, Banja Luka. The demonstrators set up a poster reading: “The wing is broken, but we remember the military flight”. Protests also swept other cities of Republika Srpska in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Throughout the night, from May 26^th to the early hours of May 27^th, Serbian television, mostly the B92 pro-western channel, broadcast reports about Mladic. There is more to the broadcasts than just jubilation about “Serbia’s throwing off the yoke”. Reporters are accusing Russia and urging Serbs to get rid of the “historically wrong Russophile delusions”…

The Balkans mass-media, increasingly hysterical over the arrest of General Mladic, have caused the attacks on Serbia and Russia to merge. Moscow should be ready for asituation when the western propaganda machine links «Mladic’s crimes»(«genocide») to «crimes by Serbs»to «Russia’s complicity», irrespective of whether Russia did or did not help harbour Ratko Mladic. The global propaganda machine is making use of Mladic’s arrest  to set up a platform for subsequent anti-Russian moves…

The Hague Tribunal Chief Prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, has already come up with a scenario for the trial. Frist, Ratko Mladic should be brought to the Tribunal and appear before the judge no later than 48 hours after his arrival. Secondly, the prosecutor seeks the joinder of this case with the Karadzhic case, so “the two could be tried together”. Legal aspects, human rights and elementary logic are all thrown away as useless. Brammertz suggests consolidating the two cases despite the fact that Karadzhic has been tried for three years now, and will have to wait for the start of Mladic’s trial for at least several months.

The amended indictment charges General Ratko Mladic with 11 counts of genocide (in Srebrenica and eight other Bosnian communities), crimes against humanity, crimes against non-Serbs, and violations of the laws and customs of war committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995. The prosecution considers that Karadzic and Mladic were part of a joint criminal enterprise with the aim to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Croats from the part of the country that Bosnian Serbs claimed for themselves. The three trials of Serbia’s prominent political leaders, Karadzhic, Seselj and Maldic, will thus definitively establish the fundamentally illegal doctrine of a “joint criminal enterprise”, running counter to the legal rules insisting on the principle of individual responsibility.

Nor does Mladic stand a chance of fair examination of his case, – something Russia is pressing for, since The Hague Tribunal takes different stands on Serbs and non-Serbs. Now that Ratko Mladic has been arrested, the Tribunal will be around for a longer period of time. Actually, the Tribunal is only just entering the main stage of its performance.

The effort to suppress any manifestation of discontent with Mladic’s arrest and the way he is being treated is gaining momentum in Serbia. Dozens of protesters were arrested in Belgrade in the first 24 hours following the General’s arrest. Notably, the Serbian Parliament suddenly suspended work on May 26^th to adjourn until June 7^th…

The Deputy Head of the Dutch Parliament Committee on European Affairs, Harry van Bommel, said that Mladic’s arrest is not enough for granting Serbia the EU candidacystatus. According to him, “we are waiting for the last fugitive, Goran Hadzic. The problem of Kosovo should be also settled, just as the Justice System reform should be carried through”.

Of all the Serbian parties, it was only the Serbian Radical Party that has strongly condemned the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The Head of the party parliamentary faction, Dragan Todorovic, said that the arrest of Ratko Mladic is, perhaps, Serbia’s most heart-rending experience. According to Todorovic, the trial of Mladic, will threaten the existence of Republika Srpska, since the Tribunal will now try to prove that the republic is a “genocidal entity”.

The arrest of Ratko Mladic ushers in another stage of the offensive against the Serbian people, against its vitally important interests, above all, the existence of Republika Srpska.  The West will demand that Serbia should recognize the independence of Kosovo. Geopolitically, this may trigger another stage of the Balkans’ re-division. The current situation urges that one should keep a close eye on what is going on around Ratko Mladic.

It is of vital importance for the current (pro-western) Serbian leadership to ensure that the report by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Serge Brammertz, to the UN Security Council will help the government in Belgrade to obtain the EU candidate status. The most vociferous opponent of Serbia’s joining the European Union is known to be the Netherlands exclusively on the grounds that Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic have still failed to be put in the dock.

But one should certainly make known the reason why the Dutch of all Europeans are so keen to put away Mladic. Few are aware that the numerous victims at Srebrenica were due to the improper execution of their duties by the Dutch peacekeepers, for back in 1995 the Muslim enclave formed part of their zone of responsibility. When the troops under Ratko Mladic encircled Srebrenica in response to the mass killing of Serbs by the armed units, led by Naser Oric (who was incidentally acquitted by The Hague Tribunal), the Dutch military did nothing to prevent the conflict and defend the civilian population. Instead, they hastily retreated from the enclave. It is for more than 15 years now that Holland has been trying to shift that infamy onto Mladic and his Army…

Now, I do in no way seek to justify violence. The force of law should be the punishment of a criminal if they are proven guilty. Mladic’s case makes us reflect on things of global scale, on the symbolism of the on-going developments which tally perfectly with what should be plainly described as the humiliation of one people, Serbs, and of one country, Serbia. You may remember that Serbs have been the main defendants tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia throughout these years.

Why should the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have been set up at all? An overwhelming majority of Russian, and nonpartisan western researchers feel that “the Tribunal is attaining an exclusively political objective, namely to find just one people guilty of all the battles fought in the last Balkan crisis, and thus justify NATO aggression on Yugoslavia in 1999, and make it look legal. The many year-long performance of the Tribunal puts across to the world community a wrong idea of the parties to the Balkan conflict and the events that took place then. The Tribunal was set up to rewrite the history of the breakup of Yugoslavia, change the nature of military collisions by shifting responsibility for all the crimes in the Balkans since the early 1990s to just one people, the Serbs.That is the reason why the number of Serbs convicted by The Hague Tribunal is so great”.

* * *

And I think I will venture another guess. The continuing “humanitarian intervention” by NATO countries in Libya badly needs cover information. They should distract public opinion from the destruction of infrastructure and civilian facilities, and the killing of civilian population, including children, in the course of air raids on Libya. They should put others on trial, not to be tried themselves. The arrest of Mladic, and the hasty decision to extradite him to The Hague despite the 69 year-old General’s obviously poor medical condition seem to be indirectly related to the Libyan factor. Notably, the NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was one of the first to welcome the arrest of Mladic, while London government officials described the event as historic.

Belgradeis in a hurry (or is being hurried) to take Mladic to The Hague. A Belgrade court authorized Ratko Mladic’s deportation on May 27^th, the very next day after his arrest. The France Presse news agency quotes the General’s lawyer, Milos Salic, as saying that “Mladic’s health condition does not prevent him from being transported to The Hague. He is carriageable”. But the defence lawyers for the former commander of the Bosnian Serb forces will appeal against the court decision citing the General’s inability to attend the trial for his poor health condition. If Mladic is nonetheless handed over to The Hague Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, then, the lawyers point out, the court will not go in session in the next 18 months.

The haste may have been prompted by a sharply negative response from the best part of the population both in Serbia proper and in the Republika Srpska. The news of Mladic’s arrest has already sparked mass-scale protests by the former General’s supporters in quite a few Serbian cities, namely Novi Sad, Kraljevo, Zrenjanin, Arandjelovac, Cacak.

Christoph Flügge of Germany has been appointed presiding judge in the forthcoming trial. The other two in the trial chamber of three judges are Alphons Orie of the Netherlands and Bakone Moloto of South Africa. The judges were prompt to allow the Tribunal prosecutors to make amendments to the indictment against Ratko Mladic within the next seven days. We shall very soon see “justice” in effect, that is putting others on trial, not to be tried themselves.

(The translation is an abridged version of the article. See the full text in Russian Original in:  http://www.fondsk.ru/news/2011/05/29/dovil-k-povestke-dnja-mirovogo-pravitelstva.html).

__________________________________________________________________

Yelena PONOMARYOVA  – Doctor of Political Sciences, Associate Professor (MGIMO – University), Ministry of Foreign Relations of Russia.

La Repubblica's overstated enthusiasm about the unearthing of the diaries creates a distinct impression that its staff was a priori familiar with them. The Hague Tribunal is supposed to guard such possessions carefully against being leaked to the media, and in a similar previous incident, Carla Del Ponte's assistant Florance Artman even faced charges over the disclosure of secrets of investigation. Considering that – despite the secrecy regime – this time the media managed to grab the diaries of a key figure from the sphere of the Hague Tribunal's interests, one is left with a sneaking suspicion that the prosecution and the newspapermen had to cooperate.

The objective behind the leak is clear. The Hague trial of former Bosnian Serbs' leader R. Karadzic became a quagmire as Karadzic brushes off the charges against him, rejects any deals with the prosecution, and is determined to prove independently that he is innocent. Under the circumstances, the information that the prosecution has the diaries written by his closest associate Mladic can have a major psychological impact on Karadzic and on the audience.

So, what – in the view of La Repubblica – implicates Mladic in the diaries? Evidently, the paper counts Mladic's ideas as intentions. The ideas – as can be expected from a general – are indeed harsh, but even if they do reflect Mladic's intentions, normally people are tried over what they have done, not over what they have thought of.

In one instance he wrote: “Muslims are our and Croats' common enemy, we need to corner them”. La Repubblica links the phrase to the anti-Muslim ethnic cleansing, but the fact that Serbs and Croats fought against Muslims together during the war in Bosnia is no news and it is unclear how mentioning it can implicate any particular individual. Moreover, the stories about the ethnic cleansing allegedly suffered by Bosnian Muslims and the death camps they were held in are not as immune to criticism as, for example, La Repubblica would claim.

Another excerpt from Mladic's diaries – one which La Repubblica branded nightmarish – reads: “the Balkans are evolving into a front in the battle between the forces seeking to Germanize the zone and those who want to Islamize it”. Notably, S. Huntington similarly dwelt on the conflict between Christendom and Islam – manifestations of which Italians routinely encounter in their own country – and never had to face justice over his widely known though controversial writings.

Another fragment of Mladic's diaries cited by La Repubblica is that “the Western coalition believes it has found a formula of turning us, the Serbs, as well as other Balkan nations, into hordes of homeless people”. According to the paper, the statement is tantamount to severe accusations of invasion against the EU and the US. The logic of the argument seems to imply that any criticism directed at Brussels and Washington should be regarded as severe accusations.

Finally, the highlight of the article featured by La Repubblica – one of the passages meant to unmask Mladic the butcher – is: “The EU and the US are flirting with the Muslims because the West has vested interests in the Middle East and needs to make concessions”. Late US congressman T. Lantos – a former opponent of Mladic – did say roughly the same. He opined that the role played by the US in the creation of a predominantly Muslim country – Bosnia and Herzegovina – in the very heart of Europe “..should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also for jihadists of all color and hue”. If expressing the idea somehow implicates Mladic, the same jury must have had serious reasons to try late senator Lantos. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims are being killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – at the rate of one Srebrenica per week – and to an extent the US is diverting the attention of the world of Islam from the plight of their brethren in the two countries by furthering the Muslim cause in Bosnia and Albania.

By the way, the phrase about eliminating Muslims and building a Great Serbia which La Repubblica ascribed to Mladic and made part of the title is not even quoted in the paper text.

Interestingly, the sensation featured by La Repubblica was not much of a novelty. A month earlier (!) Belgrade's Politika published an extensive paper titled What Mladic's Diaries Tell About. It contained a detailed analysis of the psychological background against which the private notebooks (from which La Repubblica chose to draw passages arbitrarily) had been written, of Mladic's own reasons to put his thoughts on paper, and of his relations with other Serbian leaders, mainly with R. Karadzic and S. Milosevic. The Politika author Ljubodrag Stojadinovic maintained that “war-time diaries are a totally different genre, and what Mladic's memories materialized in were mere notes and sketches put on papers while attending meetings or thinking”. Stojadinovic invoked Mladic's response to the Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina: “Decline the plan and win the war!”. It is an open question whether Mladic and other Serbian leaders made the right decisions in that epoch, but it is clear that likewise excerpts should not be accepted as evidence by a normal international court. The problem is that the Hague Tribunal is anything but a normal court and can lightheartedly employ Mladic's diaries – or maybe the La Repubblica article – as evidence.

Del Ponte admitted in her memoirs that the Hague Tribunal functions in the grey zone between the legal and the political spheres. The sobriety of the assessment is remarkable considering who it belongs to. The article in La Republica happens to be just another example of the “grey zone”.

Petr Iskenderov is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science and an international commentator at Vremya Novstey and the Voice of Russia.