Posted on 11/21/2009 7:03:08 AM PST by Ravnagora
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 the 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 ofnearly its entire Serbian and other non-Albanian populations. Harvey 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.
*****
This Harvey guys sounds like a complete broken penis, and we all know the court is a complete joke, but why doesn't Karadzic just tell this idiot Harvey to stay out of the way, sit down and STFU?
He did, and then demonstrated that his means of defending himself was simply to continually delay the proceedings.
Unfortunately for Karadzic, the court's experience with Milosevic has made them wise to this tactic, and they've declined to allow its use again.
Karadzic wasn’t given anywhere near the pre-trial preparation time that was given to Ante Gotovina, Rasim Delic, or Ramush Haradinaj (the three most prominant non-Serbian defendants to be tried by the Tribunal). They all got more two years or more to prepare, Karadzic hasn’t gotten anywhere near that much time eventhough he’s facing far more serious, not to mention more numerous, charges. The trial is delayed because he needs adequate time to prepare his defense. Why shouldn’t he be entitled to the same time amount of preparation time that’s been given to others?
The Prosecution changed the indictment in February and they amended it again in October, one week before the trial was to start. When they change their accusations, Karadzic has to change his defense strategy. This inevitably delays the proceedings. If you don’t want the trial delayed, tell the prosecution make-up their mind what they’re accusing him of. It’s been 15 years — they should have made up their minds about this a long time ago.
Another thing that’s delaying the proceedings is the fact that the Tribunal won’t pay Karadzic’s chosen team of legal advisors for their work (after they said they would). His legal advisors aren’t working now because they’re not being paid — this delays the trial. It’s not Karadzic’s fault the Tribunal won’t pay them for their work, and it’s not like he can pay them since his assets are frozen.
Karadzic didn’t choose this guy Harvey. So while the Tribunal is refusing to pay his chosen legal team, they’re ramming this guy down his thoat against his will.
Because he's not preparing a legal defence, he's simply delaying his trial.
Given the preponderance of evidence against him, I'll credit him with attempting to take the most effective course of action available to him at the time, whether it be hiding from arrest or delaying his trial, but his course of action is now limited to facing accountability for his actions, so he's screwed anyway you slice it and his supporters are just going to have to spend the rest of their days bemoaning yet another great injustice perpetrated against Serbs.
How do you know he’s not preparing a legal defense, are you a mind reader? What purpose would be served by him delaying the trial? I don’t see how it benefits him. He’s in prison as we speak — it’s not like he’s getting away with anything. If he’s convicted he winds-up exactly where he is now — in prison. What does it matter to him if he’s in prison before the trial or after the trial? Prison is prison.
If he’s guilty and he gets convicted by means of a sham trial, where he wasn’t able to present the defense he wanted to present, all that does is undermine the credibility of the verdict. What credibility does a conviction have if his supporters can rightly say that his fair trial rights were violated? If you think he’s guilty you should be the first one defending his right to defend himself and have a fair trial, because if he doesn’t have that the trial won’t prove anything.
The court is simply imposing it’s will without due process in order to save political face. Any remnants of credibility it has left which everyone knows, as you pointed out, is ... laughably impaired.
In September, the Trial Chamber imposed counsel against the clear wishes of the defendant, a practice described by the United States Supreme Court as having been largely abandoned since the unlamented late 16th and early 17th century Star Chamber, an executive entity infamous for trying political cases. The Chamber’s decision to impose counsel with broad powers to determine the strategy of the defense created a crisis, as defense witnesses refused to cooperate with imposed counsel Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins, previously ICTY-appointed amici curiae (friends of the court), thrust upon Slobodan Milosevic as defense advocates, oblivious to the fact that they’d been parties in the proceedings for over two years, and that this created-- at minimum-- an apparent conflict of interest. Mr. Kay complained bitterly, and publicly, about the non-cooperation of the defense witnesses (the Chamber had received Slobodan Milosevic’s list of witnesses when they imposed counsel), and complained of Milosevic’s lack of cooperation as well, as the proceedings came to a virtual standstill with a mere trickle of witnesses making the trip to testify in The Hague.
The imposition of counsel upon an unwilling accused-- in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which provides for the minimum fundamental right to defend oneself in person-- was approved, as a matter of law, by the Appeals Chamber (the initial imposition was appealed against by Mr. Kay and Ms. Higgins) last November. The ruling reduced this right-- which is guaranteed by the ICTY’s own Statute as a minimum fundamental right-- to the rank of a mere "presumption". In so doing, the ICTY’s President, American Theodor Meron, stated that all the "minimum" fundamental rights afforded to the accused by the ICTY’s Statute (which were imported, almost verbatim, from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, leaving out only—inexplicably-- the Covenant’s provision of the right to be tried by an independent, impartial, and competent court) were "at a par" with the right to represent oneself in person. In other words, the right for a defendant to represent himself is just a "presumption" as are all the other basic, fundamental, internationally recognized, minimal trial rights provided by the ICTY’s Statute, such as the right to know the nature of the charge, the right to remain silent, the right to present evidence in the same conditions as the Prosecutor, the right to an interpreter, and the right to be tried in one’s own presence. In fact, they are all stripped of their essence as rights. The ad hoc international legal order holds them to be mere "presumptions" to be violated at the discretion of a trial chamber when expedient, or "justified".
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=434
There's an interview here with one of Karadzic's legal advisors on Canadian campus radio: http://www.taylor-report.com/audio/stream.php?file=Taylor_Report-2009-12-14
The attorney's website on Karadzic is here (the Holbrooke docs are particularly interesting. Wonder how they'll stickhandle that one. A wild guess: by doing whatever they want?):
http://www.peterrobinson.com/ICTY/Karadzic/Karadzic_ICTY.html
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