Global Policy Forum

Four months after the death of Slobodan Milosevic, the most notorious Balkan war atrocities are once again coming under the gaze of international justice. The trials of seven Bosnian Serb officers accused of commanding soldiers in the massacre at Srebrenica and of Serb politicians and soldiers accused of atrocities in Kosovo start next month amid questions about the effectiveness of the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The former Yugoslav president's death just months before the end of his four-year genocide trial prompted concerns that red tape and the failure to arrest key suspects is hampering the ability of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to deliver justice. Milosevic died of a heart attack in his cell in March, depriving victims, jurists and historians of a conclusive verdict on the ultimate responsibility for such atrocities as Srebrenica.

The new Srebrenica case also underscores the tribunal's greatest failing: its inability to arrest the two men charged with masterminding the massacre, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic.

Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte is so frustrated by the failure to apprehend the court's two most-wanted suspects, both on the run for more than a decade, that she says she may now seek the authority to join in the hunt herself. "Since no one else seems to have the political will to locate and arrest Karadzic and Mladic, I will have no choice but to seek from the (Security) Council the powers to arrest fugitives wherever they are and to allocate to my office the necessary resources for this," Del Ponte said this month at U.N. headquarters in New York.

The tribunal has no police force and relies on other nations and NATO-led international forces to arrest suspects. Mladic is widely believed to be hiding out in Serbia, but authorities in Belgrade have said they cannot arrest him. Karadzic is believed to be in a Serb-controlled stronghold in Bosnia.

On July 14, almost 11 years to the day after Europe's worst carnage since World War II, U.N. prosecutors launch the trial of seven Bosnian Serb officers charged with commanding soldiers who rounded up and shot thousands of Muslims in the U.N. safe haven of Srebrenica. Four days earlier, former Serb president Milan Milutinovic and five Serb officers and lawmakers go on trial on charges linked to the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo. The case of the Srebrenica seven and that of Milutinovic join dozens of other trials under way or in preparation at the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal.

Set up by the Security Council in 1993, the court, based in a former insurance company office in The Hague, has indicted a total of 161 suspects and so far convicted 38 and acquitted eight. Twenty-one of the convicted war criminals are serving their sentences in prisons across Europe and 17 have already been released. The new trials come at a time of tension between Del Ponte and trial judges over the length of time it takes to bring suspected war criminals to justice, a problem highlighted by Milosevic's death before the court could pass its judgment.

Richard Dicker, of the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the tribunal must pick up the pace. "I think it's important to draw lessons from the Milosevic trial because very important trials are yet to come at the ICTY," Dicker said, referring to the tribunal by its acronym. "Eventually Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic will be tried by this tribunal."

Dicker said prosecutors should focus on a smaller number of crimes for which plentiful evidence exists in order to prove broader charges such as genocide that by definition involve widespread offenses. Tribunal judges also need to know when to rein in suspects such as Milosevic who choose to defend themselves. Self defense is a recognized right "that should be honored but not abused flagrantly by an accused who is seeking to use a criminal trial for the purpose of advancing his or her political agenda," Dicker said.