Bringing war criminals to justice is a slow business. But the net is widening

 

WHO, outside the Balkans, now remembers Radovan Karadzic? A hunted man for 13 years, the leader of Bosnia’s Serbs in the war that ended in 1995 was captured last year. He was working as a psychologist in a private Belgrade clinic. Barring any last-minute hitch, on October 26th he will finally appear in the dock at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Along with General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander who is still at large, and Slobodan Milosevic, the leader of Serbia proper who died before his lengthy trial ended, Mr Karadzic stands accused of Europe’s worst atrocities, against Croats and Bosnian Muslims, since the second world war. His alleged crimes include ordering the massacre at Srebrenica of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

The Yugoslav tribunal got going 16 years ago. It has indicted 161 people, including Serbs, Croats and Muslims, for the most serious of crimes and has brought to trial all of them but two: the elusive General Mladic and another Serb, Goran Hadzic, formerly leader of a Serb-populated breakaway part of Croatia. Mr Karadzic’s trial, the tribunal’s last, should end in 2012. Like the Tanzania-based tribunal set up to try the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Yugoslav court must close.

Meanwhile, however, other bits of The Hague are getting busier. In a room borrowed from the more recently established International Criminal Court (ICC), the Sierra Leone tribunal is trying Liberia’s ex-president, Charles Taylor. He will shortly resume his defence against charges that he directed rebel groups involved in mass rape, mutilation and murder of civilians during Sierra Leone’s civil war of 1991-2002. A dapper-looking Mr Taylor denies all; he has also dismissed allegations of cannibalism as “racist”. Once that trial finishes, it will be time for the Sierra Leone court to wind up.

The ICC itself, however, is only just getting going. Set up in 2002 to avoid the need for ad hoc tribunals, it has still to complete its first trial. It has taken four referrals: Congo, the Central Africa Republic, Uganda and, at the behest of the United Nations Security Council, Sudan. The ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has taken up cases involving both Sudanese government officials and rebel commanders. One of the rebels showed up voluntarily in The Hague this week—itself a first—for a confirmation of charges that relate to an attack on African Union peacekeepers in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

That showed up Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, who has railed against the court for indicting him earlier this year on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The attempt to haul Mr Bashir before the ICC has split the African Union. Some accuse the court of an anti-African bias. Mr Ocampo notes that, Sudan aside, it was African governments that referred all the cases.

The ICC’s first trial, of Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord accused of conscripting child soldiers, started earlier this year; the defence is about to present its case. Another trial, of two Congolese warlords, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo, starts next month. A third case, against Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, Congolese commander of a rebel group in the Central Africa Republic, is close to trial.

Mr Ocampo also has his eye on, among others, Afghanistan, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Georgia, Guinea, Kenya and, most controversially, Palestine (not a state but the authorities there have asked for ICC jurisdiction). A recent resolution from the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva has since asked for Israel’s actions in the Gaza war to be referred to the UN for possible ICC action. The resolution mentioned only Israel, though a recent report by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, also criticised Hamas for its rocket attacks.

The tribunals can proceed only when governments co-operate. Cambodia’s tribunal had to wait until this year to start trials of those responsible for the “killing fields” in the 1970s. Whoever conducts a trial, those charged have first to be caught. States that sign the ICC’s Rome Statute commit themselves to help with that, so Mr Bashir has been careful to avoid going to places in Africa where such promises are taken seriously. Some other ICC warrants are still outstanding, including for members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which terrorised parts of Uganda, and then moved on to Chad and Congo.

Some argue that trying to arrest such war criminals gets in the way of peace talks. The Security Council has the right to suspend ICC action for a year at a time on a rolling basis to give peace a chance. Had Mr Bashir pursued peace with the verve he had his troops and militias pursue Darfur’s civilians, he might have enjoyed the benefit of the council’s doubt.

Many governments have helped bring those accused by the tribunals for Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda to book. Until recently, Serbia’s was not much among them. Now it says General Mladic’s free days are numbered. Mr Karadzic tried to escape trial by claiming, to America’s denials, that he had been given immunity at the peace talks that ended Bosnia’s wars. But the Yugoslav tribunal has seen too much. It does not do immunity.

 

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Sudan and Darfur