Milosevic’s death

I find two aspects of Milosevic’s death in UN custody yesterday quite interesting. The first is what his death actually tells us about the value of using criminal prosecutions to do a “truth establishment” exercise (and the linked question of the reactions to his death in different political spheres.) The second is the continuing tale of the toxicological aspects of his death.
Regarding the value of criminal trials in “establishing a historical record” about past atrocities– which is one of the main goals people are seeking when they support such trials– Milosevic’s death, and the suicide in UN custody earlier this week of the “lesser” defendant Milan Babic, have underlined the problems with the fact that criminal trials always revolve centrally around the actions and culpability of named individuals.
Then, if key indicted individuals should somehow “escape” from the control of the court– whether through a death, a suicide, or through becoming in some other way “unfit to be tried”– the trial stops right in its tracks. And not only the issue of the guilt or innocence of the accused individual is left hanging– indeed, given the presumption of innocence, he has to continue to be presumed innocent after his death– but also the whole broader “truth establishment” venture stops dead in its tracks.
Recognizing this fact, tribunal spokesperson Christian Chartier is quoted here as saying: “This is tragic for the truth… This is tragic for the victims.”
I note that truth commissions don’t suffer from this extreme vulnerability to the physical status of a small number of individuals.
The reactions to Milosevic’s death have been interesting in this regard. (See my discussion of this issue, too, in my comment to this post over at Transitional Justice Forum.)
The BBC’s Jon Silverman (whom I met once, in Rwanda) has a piece on their website titled simply, Worst outcome for Milosevic tribunal.
Silverman writes that M’s death:

    raises questions which may tarnish the reputation of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY) and undermine confidence in war crimes justice generally.
    First, was it a mistake to roll all the charges relating to Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia – more than 60 in all – into a single trial?

Putting all the charges into a single trial had the result that no verdict at all was ever pronounced against Milosevic, since the single mammoth trial that chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte insisted on through thick and thin hadn’t finsihed before M died, whereas if the trial had been broken up into three constituent segments tried separatey, at least one of those might have been completed by now. (His trial started in 2002.)
The BBC also has this interesting page containing reactions from two Serbs, one Kosovar, and one Bosnian to the news of his death.
Of the Serbs, one, an anti-Milosevoc activist, says: “I thought I’d feel relief or closure. Instead, I feel mixture of sadness and immense anger. This one has got away. Although he spent the last years of his life imprisoned, justice has not been served.” The other said,”This is a sad time for Serbia. Many were not happy about what he did during his rule. But he defended the right of Serbia to express itself in the world… The death of Milosevic is the result of the arrogant criminal policy of the US and Nato.”
The Kosovar said, “I am happy that he died. He deserves this because he killed more than 200,000 people… I witnessed what his regime was responsible for. I hope he rests in hell. But this is the end of an era. He is dead. This could be a new start for the Balkans.”
The Bosnian said, “I would be a happy man if he was pronounced guilty and died in the next second. But by dying like this, he will become part of the Serb mythology, which already has martyrs from World War II and from the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans… I would prefer it if we were still part of Tito’s Yugoslavia. We had a much better life then.”
Interesting reactions, indeed.
Meanwhile, the wire services have some interesting tidbits regarding Milosevic’s toxicological status at the time of his death.
The background to this is that he has long had a heart condition, which has been under treatment by (I believe) Dutch doctors under the supervision of the UN detention facility. Recently he made a strong appeal to the court to be allowed to travel to Moscow for treatment for his heart condition, but that request was turned down.
He and his attorney had apparently been expressing worries recently that he was being poisoned.
His attorney requested yesterday that his body be sent to Russia fort autopsy. But that request was turned down, and the autopsy was performed today by Dutch doctors. (Personaly, I believe that it would have been better to have had a broad international team overseeing the autopsy.) The Dutch pathologists’ results have not yet been made public. But AP has this intriguing tidbit, that says:

    Traces of a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis were found in a blood sample taken in recent months from former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, a Dutch news report said, citing an unidentified “adviser” to the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
    The report came hours after Milosevic’s legal adviser showed journalists a letter the late Serb leader wrote Friday, one day before his body was discovered in prison, alleging that he was being poisoned.
    The report was on the text service of the Dutch state broadcaster, NOS. It did not identify its source further…
    The NOS report did not identify the drug found in Milosevic’s blood “in a test done in recent months,” but said it could have had a “neutralizing effect” on his other medications.

Reuters meanwhile has this from Moscow:

    Doctors treating Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague suspected he was secretly spitting out the medicines they gave him, the head of a Russian clinic said on Sunday.
    “The treatment they gave him was just to give him medicines for high blood pressure and they suspected he was not taking them,” Leo Bokeria, head of the Bakulev Cardio-Vascular Surgery Center in Moscow, told Russia’s NTV television station.
    “They carried out tests to check for the presence of the medicine in his bloodstream because they thought that he was hiding it in his cheeks.”
    Bokeria added: “In the conditions in which he was being held, it was impossible to help him.”

Anyway, let’s hope the toxicology situation becomes clearer over the days ahead. (It would be nice to have clear autopsy results on Yasser Arafat, too, one of these days, eh? Rumors that he was poisoned with some slow-acting agent still persist in Palestine.)
But the question about the value of war-crimes courts in helping establish the “truth” about past atrocities is a broader and longer-lasting one, I think

35 thoughts on “Milosevic’s death”

  1. Interesting stuff about Yugoslavia and Milosevic. An end to what is IMHO at best a “Grouchian (not Grotian) Moment.” Concerning Arafat, it’s not just Palestine – did others notice when Danny Rubinstein, serious Israeli journalist and biographer of Arafat, said he believes (pretty strongly iirc) YA was poisoned by Israel?

  2. This is wiki enry on Milosevic’s death. A few remarks.
    — Suicide theory is unbelievable, he had all reasions to go on with his circus until the end.
    — There are no reasons to suspect poisoning as such, by introducing certain poison into his body.
    — But there are strong reasons to suggest that Milosevic was given wrong medications which worsened his condition.
    — Anyway, this is yet another heavy blow to the international law and the UN 🙁
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87#Death_of_Milo.C5.A1evi.C4.87

  3. Hmmmm… It looks like TNJ is kind of enthusiastic about situation with Milosevic trial. I have an impression that there is no particular concern about the notion of collective guilt, the strong possibility that he was given wrong drugs???
    Thsi does not look good: IMHO, the natural reference point for this trial is Nuremberg. From this prospective, it was pretty much of a disaster. Unlike with Geramny, there is no conviction and there no particular prospects for Serbia and Kosovo both politically and economically.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87#Death_of_Milo.C5.A1evi.C4.87“>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87#Death_of_Milo.C5.A1evi.C4.87″>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87#Death_of_Milo.C5.A1evi.C4.87

  4. These trials are no use at all. A couple more like this and even Nuremburg will start to look questionable in retrospect.
    In addition to Helena’s main post:
    * Extreme cases make bad law.
    * These cases carry extra-legal agendas.
    The latter include a “globalising” Imperialist attempt to reduce or abolish national inedpendence and sovereignty, while at the same time increasing Imperial military and legal dominance.
    The question of truth, reconciliation and justice inevitably becomes the question of “permanent revolution”. This phrase of Marx’s occurs at the end of The March Address to the Communist League, given in 1850. It has echoed down the years.
    What it means is that the only real change is a revolutionary change, in other words a qualitative change. It prompts people to ask: What is new and different and permanently better about the world after something like this tribunal? Answer: nothing at all.
    Only if there is a permanent change can we feel secure from the given menace. In bourgeois narratives, such permanent changes are often declared but always prove false.
    The unreconstructed Kissinger in the adjacent thread is a good example. He would do it all again.
    All the a tribunal of this sort can produce is a “version”, serving interests that are powerful. It is just a very expensive form of hack journalism. Milosevic and Saddam do us a service by defying and mocking these charades.

  5. The following is from Father Albert Nolan’s “God in South Africa” (1988) (p.197):
    “Repentance
    “Every gospel or prophetic message includes a call to repentance. The English word ‘repentance’, however, is misleading. It does not say enough. The Greek word that it translates, metanoia, means a change of mind and heart with the consequent change of behaviour or practice.”

  6. Dominic,
    What is your opinion of trying Ariel Sharon for alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon in the 1980s? Put aside the question of his capacity for trial since his stroke.

  7. “What is your opinion of trying Ariel Sharon for alleged war crimes committed in Lebanon in the 1980s? Put aside the question of his capacity for trial since his stroke.”
    Such a trial would be completely unthinkable in the world as it is, for the simple reason that the power of the USA outbalances the power of international law, and the USA would never allow such a trial. As long as that is the case, no power in the world can prevent Israel or the United States from violating international law (which they do continuously), or can punish them for doing so.
    Therefore your question is irrelevant.

  8. فضيحة اخرى لفرق الموت الاميركية البريطانية
    شرطة البصرة تعتقل 3 بريطانيين متنكرين بزي عربي
    لدى محاولتهم نسف مقر الحزب الاسلامي
    ذكرت وكالة “قدس برس” للأنباء نقلا عن مراسها في مدينة البصرة أنّ شرطة البصرة اعتقلت مساء الخميس الماضي 9/3/2006، ثلاثة بريطانيين متنكرين، كانوا يحاولون زرع عبوات قرب مقر للحزب الإسلامي.
    وبحسب مصادر أمنية عراقية فإنّ دورية تابعة للشرطة الحكومية، تمكّنت من إلقاء القبض على ثلاثة أشخاص كانوا يقومون بزرع عبوات ناسفة، قرب مقر تابع للحزب الإسلامي العراقي.
    وأضاف المصدر بأنه بعد التحقيق معهم؛ تبيّن أنهم جنود بريطانيون، متنكرين بزي عربي، وأضاف: “إّن قوات بريطانية قامت باعتقال المجموعة العراقية ومعها الجنود الثلاثة البريطانيين، ثم عادت وأفرجت عن جنودها، وأبقت أفراد الدورية رهن الاعتقال”، حسب التأكيدات.
    ويقول مراقبون إنّ هذه الحادثة، تعيد إلى الأذهان، سيناريو مشابه، كان قد حصل في البصرة، عندما القي القبض على عدد من البريطانيين متنكرين بزي عربي، كانوا يحاولون تفجير مرقد تابع للشيعة، حسب ما تردّد
    http://www.alkader.net/mars/faraqelmoot_060313.htm
    You talking about “value of criminal trials in “establishing a historical record” about past atrocities– which is, after all, one of the main goals people are seeking when they support such trials-”
    The words nice and the talking easy Helena but who really did and doing these atrocities?
    Please read this just two days ago 2 Britt’s solder dressed as Arab, again caught in action planting bombs in Basra and the Iraqi forward them to Iraqi police soon the Britt’s tanks cam and arrested all the police with the two Britt’s?
    You don’t hear this in CNN/FOX this “value of criminal” you talking about.
    So who is doing the “atrocities”?
    Enough talking we knew very well there is imperialism and colonial power they never ever leave their attitude to destroy sociétés and enquire land and nations

  9. I’d be more in favor of war crimes trials if all war criminals (or people guilty of torture or other crimes against humanity) had an equal chance of facing justice. Sharon, Mugabe, Castro, Bush, Kissinger, Milosevic, Pinochet and so on. In practice it only happens to the thug who is no longer useful to the powerful.

  10. Joshua, in response to your question, at the time that my friend Chibli “Candidate” Mallat was working w/ the Sabra and Shatila survivors to bring the case against Sharon in belgium, a big part of me thought “Great!” but the bigger part of me said, “So what?” It was pretty clear nothing really bad would happen to Sharon as a result of the case– some minor inconvenience, maybe… But meanwhile, what Belgium and all other governments really should have been placing emphasis on was pushing the peace process forward and thereby bringing a definitive END to Israel’s continued war crimes, crimes against humanity etc in the occupied territories. That would have been a lot more useful– even if it meant giving Sharon a “free pass” on the war crimes of the past.
    I believe I actually wrote a Hayat column to that effect at the time.
    Well, as we know, the S&S case was hurriedly brought to a close by the Belgian government anyway. And Sharon meanwhile continued to be given a free pass on his intransigence in the peace process…
    Salah, that is so interesting! I’d love to know more about that alkader.net site you linked to… OPh, interesting! It seems to be the Iraqi CP’s site.
    Donald J., I quite agree!

  11. Personally, Helena, I also think that it is important to end Palestinian war crimes.
    And for all of Sharon’s faults, he probably took more steps to pave the way for a resolution of the conflict than most leaders on either side have.

  12. Joshua,
    I also think that it is important to end Palestinian war crimes
    OOOOh finally we got common ground to talk then Joshua

  13. I also think that it is important to end Palestinian war crimes
    yes. suicide bombings of civilian centers, Qassam rocket attacks, most every other tactic employed by palestinian guerrillas (every one in clear violation of the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907 establishing the laws of war? namely those clauses requiring a “fixed emblem recognizable at a distance”, “carrying arms openly” etc. Also the IV Geneva convention of 1949 addressing the protection of civilians & every provision of the 1948 Convention on Genocide. considering these actions are officially sanctioned by HAMAS’ senior leadership and in its charter, why wouldn’t this make each of them eligible for a war crimes tribunal as well?

  14. I have very mixed feeling about this discussion. A part of me has long been heartened by the notion that “war crimes” trials at least established the principle that there are crimes committed by organized state entities as well as individuals, though the individuals ruling those entities get charged and sometimes convicted. That seems important, even if unenforceable except when what is happening is victors’ justice.
    But perhaps there is another way — perhaps all that matters is making the victims as close to whole as can be (not very close, usually.)

  15. Any prosecution of Ariel Sharon would probably have been under the very contentious Yamashita precedent from the Second World War. General Yamashita was hanged for the actions of troops he could not control, simply because they were under his command organizationally. I believe one important argument in the Yamashita case was that Yamashita had trained and motivated the soldiers who did the killing.
    In the case of the Sabra and Shatilla killings, however, the perpretrators were Lebanese allies of the Israelis. There is good argument that Sharon “Must have known” about the massacre, but that doesn’t put him in charge. And Sharon was not responsible for the training or “Military culture” of the Lebanese forces.
    Ariel Sharon did not order the killings and did not pull the trigger, he failed to stop the killings. Why did the world want to put Sharon on trial but ignore the Lebanese who perpetrated the crime? We must ask if anti-Semitism is showing itself here.

  16. I think that Donald has a very valid point. That inevitably prosecutions of these crimes becomes somewhat selective and has a politically based agenda.
    Looking at it from the most cynical view, one can say that these trials are necessary simply because, once a leader who has committed great atrocities has been defeated, you have to figure out SOMETHING to do with them. You can’t just say “off with their heads” and be done with it. At the very least, such trials prevent mob rule sending people off to the guillotines.
    But I think you can take a more charitable view and say that war crime tribunals can play a legitimate role in the aftermath of conflicts. However, they have to cover all parties to a specified conflict to a specified time. For all the talk of Milosovic being politically persecuted, he was not the only individual who was indicted or charged with war crimes relating to the conflict. There were Croatian leaders and generals who were charged as well. Overall, the tribunal has indicted 161 individuals. This isn’t just a case of trying to humiliate a defeated political leader, and attempts to praise Milosovic’s “resistance” because it “stands up to imperialism” really insult the important work done by this tribunal.
    I think we overstate the case if we say that with the death of Milosovic, we will never know the truth or have reconciliation. The Nuremburg trials (which were not “party neutral”) did not lose their value simply because Hitler’s death made him unavailable for trial. Although war ctimes tribunals can suffer from flaws, the ICTY has in fact worked pretty well and played an important role.

  17. I agree that it overstates the case to say that Milsoevic’s death means there will not now be either truth establishment or reconciliation. But that is mainly because, regarding reconciliation, I don’t think that ICTY ever did anything to foster it– indeed, if anything, rather the opposite. And there is now emerging some survey evidence that underscores that judgment.
    One problem w/ criminal proceedings, from the point of view of reconciliation, is their necessarily adversarial, winner-and-losers aspect which perpetuates the existence of separate, competitive narratives of what happened (*all of which always feature that one particular group’s own “victmization” while minimizing the responsibility it also bore for the events) rather than building a single, values-based narrative as, for example, the South African TRC sought to do. Trials also foster the repeated retraumatization of people called as witnesses.
    What to do with deposed tyrants? In the old days, Idi Amin went to Saudi Arabia w/ his ill-gotten millions, or Baby Doc Duvalier to the French Riviera, ditto. Not a satisfactory or “just” outcome by any means– but surely better than having them cling violently onto power for additional decades because of the fear of prosecution if they left? There’s probably something to be said for the preservation/retrieval of the old “golden parachute” option.

  18. There are several issues that arise from this. I doubt I can do justice to them all.
    I know that you have been involved in “restorative justice,” an area which I have always had a casual interest in (though criminal law is not an area in which I practice). I have attended a couple of forums on the subject. I asked one of the participants and mentioned the issue of “reconciliation.” In response, the panelist (I believe a D.A. from Wisconsin who has been a strong advocate of rj) said (I’m paraphrasing) “Stop right there. Restorative Justice does not mean that all parties get together and ‘reconcile’ as if they were both equals to the incident in question. There is still a perpetrator of a wrong, and a victim of that wrong, and that distinction is made clear throughout the process.”
    Traditionally, criminal proceedings ask the questions 1) What crime has been committed, 2) Whodunnit, and 3) What is the appropriate punishment for this action? RJ changes that to 1) Who has suffered harm, 2) How can that harm be remedied, and 3) Who is responsible for remedying that harm? Nevertheless, the focus on these proceedings still has the perpetrator who is responsible for repairing the damage to the victim.
    Even with reconciliation, there is a role for the criminal justice system, even if it can be modified.
    With respect to South Africa, although atrocities were committed throughout thee apartheid era, the regime was ultimately removed through political pressure, and the transition was done peacefully. That ultimately made the establishment of the Truth Commission more palatable, although I recall speaking with one colleague who just couldn’t accept the fact that people received complete amnesty.
    Funny you mention Idi Amin, because I was thinking of him as an example yesterday. In cases like that, I think we just have to say a somewhat cynical deal was cut. Let the guy go far, far away in exchange for getting rid of the ongoing horror. That is not the optimal solution, but an occasional necessary compromise.

  19. Today’s news shows the Israelis acting like monsters yet again, and yet again, with British and American help.
    I do hope Helena is safe from the evil backlash to this evil action.

  20. With respect to South Africa, although atrocities were committed throughout thee apartheid era,
    Israel was the only state that had very close relation and support Ian Smith regime and ‎built very interactive policies between them especially in military and nuclear projects ‎at that time. Ian Smith Regime was boycotted By UN.‎
    It’s amazing how the similarity between the two regimes in regards to atrocities ‎committing

  21. What in the world do the last two comments have to do with war crimes tribunals or Slobodan Milsovic?
    It seems that there are some people who just want to show up every day and vent about how much they hate Israel.

  22. just to drop a historical note as usual:
    it’s interesting that the above thread was talking about sharon’s war crimes trial as if it were hypothetical. after the massacres of sabra and shatila, he was found responsible for war crimes by the israeli government’s investigative commission, led by then-chief-justice kahan of the israeli supreme court. ironically, sharon’s lawyers tried to use that finding to argue that the belgian war crimes prosecution was ‘double jeopardy’. yamashita
    but a question i have about the milosevic situation is about whether folks see a useful distinction between trials as a way of dealing with direct perpetrators of war crimes (&c) as opposed to those ultimately responsible for them. a useful distinction in terms of a longer-term community process, in terms of justice, in terms of making truth known in public…
    [i should also say that i’m pretty deeply skeptical of relying on any trial approach, given the problems of selective prosecution and tendency to focus on publicity rather than justice or truth (f’rinstance, the sheer irrelevance of the nuremberg trials to the late-1940s anti-roma and anti-jewish pogroms in eastern europe, or the wrist-slapping habitually doled out in washington in response to everything from death-squad funding to torture orders). but i’m still sad that both milosevic and sharon are dead (ok, dead and undead) without heading the word “guilty” from someone in a robe who isn’t the pope.]

  23. Rozelle,
    The Kahane commission found that the only people who were criminally responsible were the militiamen who actually carried out the massacre. In virtually any other country in the world, that would be the end of the story.
    Israel nevertheless took even further steps to determine indirect responsibility. Not that which gives rise to criminal liability, but that which may be used to determine whether one was fit for office. It was there that the comission found Sharon responsible, prompting his resignation of defense minister.
    So if you want to rely on that ruling to determine “it’s already been decided” then the only conclusion you can reach is “not guilty.”

  24. Slobodan Milsovic?
    There are probably 10,000 avowedly disinterested humanitarians and liberals who wanted to see him convicted and punished for crimes against humanity.
    Another 25,000 to 250,000 Bosnians, Croatians, and other Balkan opponents wanted him punished in revenge for crimes against their groups. Maybe another 250,000 Muslims (those that remember him at all) side with the prosecution too. So this makes a million or so people who would see him punished, but primarily for reasons of political, ethnic, or religious retribution.
    On the other side, there is probably several millions of slavs who, even if they don’t think he was great, probably vaguely sympathize with his cause or feel their Serbian brothers are being persecuted by some malign anti-Slav conspirators. This would include politicians like Putin, who in private may loathe Slobo. “Testimony” presented against him probably didn’t reach these people at all. If it had, they would probably not have believed. Or some would have said, “Great work. Too bad he did not kill even more.” Yes, he has a fan club. See: http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/
    Finally, there are the millions or billions who, long ago, lost any track of events in the Balkans and would not be able to place the name or face at all. After all, it has now been nearly 15 years since some of his alleged crimes.
    The trials of S.M. and Saddam both raise serious questions about the efficacy of political trials to inform or persuade anyone.

  25. about how much they hate Israel.
    Before making personal attack looks to your all posts how it’s full of a pathetic ‎comments ironic hate toward Arab/ Muslims and Palestine’s.‎
    More importantly we specks facts here which we highlights that some Israelis and ‎Israel doing and did atrocities ‎on their Owen regardless of international law ‎comparable with Slobodan Milsovic its more series and gangers for the humanity.‎
    Its better if you speaks to correct polices and incorrectness of the behaviour that your ‎state did instead of defending its misbehaviours in rearguards of human atrocities.‎

  26. Salah, generally, when the subject involves Israel, I only respond to clear misrepresentations of the facts or racist attacks on Israel. This does include exposing Palestinian or Arab bigotry where it rears its ugly head. But you can’t credibly say that I direct hate toward Arabs and Muslims.

  27. respond to clear misrepresentations of the facts or racist attacks on Israel
    What’s the “racist attacks” here mentioning Israel close relation with South Africa and ‎complete friendly and cooperation with Racist Regime at a time all the world ‎boycotted that Regime?‎
    Are you ashamed? ‎
    Are you insulted? ‎
    Are we fooling any one here?‎
    What I put is to highlight the crimes against Humanity either in South Africa, ‎Palestine, Yugoslavia, and Iraq.‎

  28. Can’t say I show up every day (too busy)…. but what I feel towards the Israeli GOVERNMENT is pretty much what I feel towards the American Government at present…. disgust.
    they are hypocritical, incompetent, immoral and dishonest. There is no other way to slice it.

  29. “What’s the “racist attacks” here mentioning Israel close relation with South Africa and ‎complete friendly and cooperation with Racist Regime at a time all the world ‎boycotted that Regime?”
    Except Saudi Arabia and Iraq, who were some of Apartheid South Africa’s top oil suppliers (which proped up the regime more than any Israeli cooperation).
    But let me guess they were “tools of the Americans and Zionists.”

  30. Joshua,
    Joshua,
    Keep twisting in the words and sentences you are so naive and dishonest talking to you just matter of wasting time,
    Look where we start and where we ending with your calms of Hatred of State of Israel.
    You are like a cat, whatever you through the cat it will land on four leges.

  31. Salah, that is so interesting! I’d love to know more about that alkader.net site you linked to… OPh, interesting! It seems to be the Iraqi CP’s site.
    I really don’t have much about this story but this site yes it’s the Iraqi communist party.
    Helena, It might be these news rise eyebrows, but believe me if some one in Iraq now he will tell you more about some doggy things happing their but regrettably all the news and internet other media monitored and Iraqi starting fear about their life.
    But read this which came from Router news agency also so interesting
    American arrested with weapons in Iraq-official

  32. He said he had witnessed “dozens of illegal acts” by US troops, claiming they viewed all Iraqis as “untermenschen” – the Nazi term for races regarded as sub-human.

    Mr Griffin, 28, who spent two years with the SAS, said the American military’s “gung-ho and trigger happy mentality” and tactics had completely undermined any chance of winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi population. He added that many innocent civilians were arrested in night-time raids and interrogated by American soldiers, imprisoned in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, or handed over to the Iraqi authorities and “most probably” tortured.

    SAS soldier quits Army in disgust at ‘illegal’ American tactics in Iraq

  33. Salah,
    Thanks, I love cats, I have four of them.
    We were originally talking about the efficacy of war crimes tribunals compared with truth and reconciliation commissions. So Salah, how did we get here?

  34. Except Saudi Arabia and Iraq, who were some of Apartheid South Africa’s top oil suppliers
    Now tell us who supplied Germany with oil to continue their atrocities, you should know better than me?
    You should know that major Oil supplier producer also ME But it was controlled by Britain.

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