The Banality of Law

Blagejovic enters in the presence of two burly, but unarmed, UN guards, one of whom sits next to him. Like all of the DRINA Corps senior officers, he was a career officer in the Yugoslav National Army before the war. Today, he’s dressed in a plain dark blue suit, with a blue shirt and a black tie. He has a moustache, and he speaks with a raspy, confident voice. The television cameras catch him from above and show thin wisps of hair that have been carefully combed across a balding head.

Behind bars: Radislav Krstic,
commander of the DRINA
Corps of the Bosnian Serb
Army, oversaw the Srebrenica
massacre. He has been
sentenced by the Hague
tribunal to 35 years in jail.

Blagejovic looks ordinary in civilian clothes, but it also doesn’t take much to imagine him in uniform. It’s hard to tell whether he would have been more comfortable giving or taking orders. I’m looking for some distinguishing feature, but Blagejovic does not cooperate. At least not at once.

This case may lack the theater of the Milosevic trial, but it has its own bizarre aspects. Blagejovic was arrested by NATO troops on August 10, 2001, but for the last year he’s refused to speak to his lawyer, an American named Michael Carnavas. A year ago, Carnavas startled everyone by announcing that Blagejovic had tried to bribe him by demanding some of Carnavas’s hefty defense budget in return for cooperating. Carnavas denounced it immediately and earned Blagejovic’s undying hostility.

Carnavas was appointed by the Tribunal registrar, and it’s a mystery why he hasn’t been replaced, given that he never speaks to his client. Carnavas has done his best to mount a defense, and called witnesses. His argument is that Blagejovic (who was appointed shortly before the massacre) could not have known of the killings, which were being orchestrated by special forces from outside the DRINA Corps and paramilitaries like Milan Lukic, been drafted in from other regions.

Carnavas himself is not popular around here. People say he throws his arms about, abuses the prosecution and acts like everyone’s worst stereotype of an American attorney. But today he looks subdued. Perhaps it’s because he is being quietly and effectively rebuked by the chief prosecuting attorney, Peter McLoskey for giving two interviews to thre Serbian press. McLoskey (the son of the late US Congressman) refers with regret to the articles (“although of course we take the media with a grain of salt”). Having talked to his “distinguished colleague”, McLoskey is able to assure the judges that there will be no more such “unfortunate” leaks.

Blagejovic wants to tell his side of the story, and he’d better get moving because his trial is due to wind up by July 30. The purpose of this hearing is to consider the request. Judge Liu Daqun, from China, warns Blagejovic that if he testifies under oath, he could well incriminate himself, but that if he just gives a “solemn statement” which is not subject to cross-examination, it won’t carry the same weight. Given this, intones Lui, the court recommends that Blagejovic had better talk to his lawyer.

Suddenly Blagejovic comes alive. He bristles with anger: “Whatever you do, don’t force me to meet with Carnavas. I don’t want to meet with him, ever!” Lawyer Carnavas is not having a good day. First he gets a public dressing-down for speaking to the press, now his client is giving him the cold shoulder.

Judge Liu looks impassive, and announces a recess. People pick up papers and start looking forward to the weekend. Blagejovic is escorted out by UN guards. Soon he’ll be back in the Tribunal detention center in Scheveningen, near the sea, where rumor has it he and the other Serbs happily consort with the Muslim and Croat detainees.

I struggle to make a connection between what I’ve just seen and the massacre at Srebrenica. It’s certainly harder than it was at the ICMP identification center in Tuzla. Seeing Blagejovic behind a glass panel certainly doesn’t have the same impact as the skeleton of one of his 15 year-old victims.

But the real contrast lies in this strange legal proceeding. It has moved at half speed, in disconnected exchanges. Judge Lui’s ponderous and awkward English slowed it down further. “I …..must …lemind you that under article 84 bis…..” Nothing could be further from the swift downward slash of the knife, the hammering guns, the speed with which life was snuffed out in the July 1995 massacre.

The Tribunal’s process may be ponderous, but it has been accepted universally and will admit to no deviations. This is what gives it credibility, and the right to pass judgment on acts of total deviance, like Srebrenica. I also appreciate the irony of a judge from Communist China gently reminding this Serb butcher, who helped to kill over 7,000 humans without a thought for their rights, that he has a right not to incriminate himself.

But none of the widows from Srebrenica are present to relish the irony. Even if they were, they would surely find it hard to understand why the real concern is that Blagejovic won’t get a fair trial because he refuses to talk to his lawyer. That is hardly the sort of justice that will soften the edges of their anger and pain.

On Trial

The Hague, Netherlands, June 17: Courtroom number 3 at the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague is a modern, functional room, like the offices of the ICMP in Tuzla. Visitors sit in a gallery, which is arranged into three tiers for the press, “VIPs” and others.

The court operates behind a thick glass panel. The only concessions to the grandeur of law are the vivid red gowns of the three trial judges (who are from China, the Ukraine and Argentina) and the elegant white cravats and black robes of the two teams for the prosecution and defense. Four members of the registry (which administers the tribunal) sit ranged in front of the judges.

Earlier today, in another courtroom, the Tribunal witnessed the opening salvos by Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia, in his own defense. Milosevic is certainly the most distinguished prisoner in the Hague but he has consistently denounced the legitimacy of the Tribunal, so the decision was taken to allow him to defend himself, in an effort to ensure his participation. He has seized the opportunity to mount a theatrical and histrionic defense, bullying judges, scoring political points, and mocking the entire process.

This morning, Milosevic opened his defense by demanding that hundreds of witnesses be called in his defense, including Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder and General Wesley Clark. Instead of going into contortions over this latest taunt, the judges cleverly reminded Milosevic that he had 150 days to lay out his defense. This leaves him with the daunting task of making his selection, and justifying it in writing.

Opinions are divided on whether the Tribunal’s credibility has been reduced or enhanced by Milosevic’s antics. Some feel he has turned the thing into a circus and gravely discredited the gravitas of the court. The previous president, a British judge, had to resign with a brain tumor, and there are some who say that the strain contributed to his illness.

But one Serbian I speak to (who hates Milosevic for what he has done to her country) insists that anything is permissible when a man is on trial for genocide. She also says that the personal strain on Milosevic (who has a weak heart) is extraordinary and she speaks of him almost reverently, as a “superman” for taking on his defense.

This is a woman who marched for his downfall in Belgrade. Her view is that we should not be diverted by Milosevic’s theatrical performance, any more than we should be lulled by the red robes and legal mumbo jumbo. For all its mannerisms, a law court is a mirror of the real world. People are fighting for their life here, just as they did on the hills above Srebrenica. It’s just that the surroundings are so different. I’m not so sure.

Reversal of Fortune: A survivor
from Srebrenica watches the trial
of Slobodan Milosevic at the
Hague Tribunal.

In courtroom 3, a trial chamber of three judges is hearing a motion by Vidoje Blagejovic, who was a senior commander in the Bosnian Serb Army that oversaw the Srebrenica massacre. Blagejovic has asked to give a statement, and this trial chamber is hearing his request. This is the reason for my presence. It will, I hope, round off my own short portrait of the Srebrenica tragedy.

In contrast to the Milosevic hearing this morning, which attracted a huge audience, I count two journalists, one Very Important Person, and four unimportant persons like myself. Two are related to people working at the tribunal. Whatever his role at Srebrenica, Blagejovic clearly does not attract much attention from the outside world, but I’m feeling quite keyed up at the prospect of seeing in person one of those who desecrated the valley I have just visited.

The bald facts about the Hague Tribunal are as follows: it was established in May 1993 by the UN Security Council, following the Serbs’ first major assault on Srebrenica, as part of a political package that also established Srebrenica as one of several UN “safe areas.” During its 11 years in operation, the Tribunal has indicted a total of 112 individuals in connection with the entire wars in the former Yugoslavia. 45 have been arrested, 50 are in custody and 25 are still loose. (The rest have been released, died, or had indictments dropped). The Tribunal has cost well over a billion dollars.

13 persons have been indicted in connection with Srebrenica, and six are still on the run. They include the High Priest of the Srebrenica blood-letting, the former head of the Bosnian Serb Army, General Ratko Mladic, and the Bosnian Serb civilian leader, Radovan Karadzic, who are both living in Serbia.

Also indicted but on the loose is Ljubisa Beara, who was head of the Bosnian Serb Army’s security administration and played Adolf Eichman to Mladic’s Hilter, organizing the logistics of the massacre. Several notable Serb paramilitary leaders, like Milan Lukic, a handsome psychopath from Visegrad who went on a murderous spree in Srebrencia in July 1995, have not yet even been publicly indicted by the Tribunal.

Of those in detention in connection with Srebrenica, only one, Nasir Oric, is a Muslim. Oric organized the Muslim defense of Srebrenica between 1992 and 1995, until he was withdrawn shortly before the collapse. He is a hero to the Muslim survivors, but he is charged with overseeing atrocities against Serbs in the Srebrenica area in late 1992 and early 1993.

The Serbs who are in detention, like Blagejovic, are mainly senior army officers from the DRINA Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, which operated in Eastern Bosnia and besieged Srebrenica. The DRINA Corps Commander, General Krstic, has already been sentenced by the Tribunal to genocide. Blagejovic himself commanded the Bratunac Brigade of the DRINA Corps and was directly under Krstic in the chain of command. The registrar has lumped Blagejovic’s trial together with that of Dragan Jokic, who was chief engineer for the Zvornik Brigade and is charged with supervising the digging up of the graves, and the reburials.

As I take down the names and facts, I remind myself that accountability is – like the identification of victims – one of the keys to the reconstruction of the place I have just visited. They can rebuild Srebrenica’s houses, exhume the graves, identify the victims and start their small businesses, but if those who were responsible for the massacre are not brought to justice it will all be for nought. The abstract hatred that we discussed earlier could yet again find a specific target. There is much at stake in Courtroom 3.