Thursday's news that Serb General Ratko Mladic had finally been apprehended for genocide marked the culmination of a busy and significant period in the development of international criminal law.
The new Egyptian regime confirmed this week, for instance, that former president Hosni Mubarak would be tried in an Egyptian court for the pre-meditated murder of protesters during this winter's populous uprising. Similarly, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced last week that he had requested permission to open an investigation into the postelection violence in Côte d'Ivoire, where former president Laurent Gbagbo refused for months to cede power to his democratically elected successor. And strikingly, when the UN Security Council drew up its initial list of measures to address the violence that Colonel Moammar Gadhafi was directing against the Libyan people, a referral of the situation to the International Criminal Court figured prominently.
The timing was perfect,” observed La Tribune de Genève.
“What a coincidence.” The arrest came on the day the EU’s top diplomat Catherine Ashton was in Belgrade. And at the same time, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was preparing to go before the UN to lambast Serbia for its insufficient efforts, the paper noted.
One year away from elections, pro-European Tadic also “needed to offer hope to a population shaken by the economic crisis. A candidature for the EU, that will improve prospects!”
While the arrest has been celebrated as historic in Europe, it won’t be making everyone happy in Serbia, the paper added. With Mladic regarded by some as a national hero, “these proud people hate to deliver their citizens to an international tribunal that is accused of dispensing the ‘justice of superiors’”.
“With the arrest of Mladic, Serbia has closed a dark chapter of its history,” wrote the Tages-Anzeiger’s correspondent in the Balkans.
Over the past 16 years, the Belgrade authorities have often led the West on about arresting Mladic, who has benefited from the protection of the army and the secret services in the meantime. These units have blood on their hands over the Bosnian war and still have no interest in ensuring all the truth is revealed. But this clique has now lost its influence, the paper said.
Moreover, Tadic has understood that anti-western politicians, ultra-nationalist parties and reform opponents no longer go down well with the Serbian people.
The UN Security Council created the "ad hoc" War Crimes Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda to address the tandem great humanitarian disasters of the 1990s. The project was nonetheless slow to develop, as there was much to be done: Tribunals were created and staffed from the ground up, criminal investigations were conducted and indictments drawn up, and, of course, key accused were tracked and extradited to the tribunals for trial.
None of this was easy, but the greater goal of justice for the victims and -just possibly-potential deterrence of future crimes, guided those who led the second wave of international criminal justice.
The 1998 creation of the permanent International Criminal Court further bolstered international criminal law immeasurably. The Hague-based Court was formed under the belief that the creation of successive ad hoc tribunals to address individual humanitarian crises was simply unsustainable. The creation of mixed international and domestic war crimes tribunals in Sierra Leone and Cambodia -the latter, a shocking three decades after the genocide that prompted its creation -further led to a sense of "tribunal fatigue" among many in foreign policy circles.
What was needed was one court that could respond to crises that would not be addressed domestically, a court that would be ready to react with indictments as soon as guns were first directed against civilians.
Over the past months, the International Criminal Court has proven its ability to do just that. Given that the permanent court is ever at the ready, what the international community was unable to do in previous conflicts -refer a developing humanitarian crisis immediately to an independent international war crimes court -has become a truly viable option.
La Liberté said that in one move Serbia had reconciled somewhat with its history while at the same time preparing for its future. Now, Serbia could “dream of Europe”.
“No arrest, no integration,” said the paper’s editorial. “The capture of Ratko Mladic was a key condition for Serbia to enter the European house. Yesterday, with one hand the government delivered the fugitive, with the other it was knocking harder than ever at the EU’s door.”
But it warned that while it had made an important step towards its candidature for the EU, “the road to Brussels is still long and there are many obstacles still to overcome”.
The country needs to fight against corruption and the influence of criminal networks and deal with its refusal to recognise Kosovo’s independence. After that, it still needs the backing of the EU’s 27 members.
But the EU has been exhausted by the latest entries of its poorest nations Bulgaria and Romania and with its less than reassuring economic indicators, Serbia doesn’t have the best profile for seducing the union, said La Liberté. “Just one rejection by a country would pour cold water on Serbia’s aspirations”, it noted.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung saw the arrest as the result of both pragmatism by the Serbian authorities and pressure being exerted from outside.
According to the paper, Serbia now regards EU membership as more important than Mladic, a figure who represents a dark period that Belgrade would prefer to have nothing more to do with.
Its major obstacle towards EU membership is now out of the way, especially if Belgrade is cooperative over Kosovo, the paper noted.
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