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Last_summer,Radovan Karadzic, one of the most notorious accused warcriminals to stand trial since the Nuremberg and Tokyotribunals, cross-examined prosecution witness MiloradDavidovic, a former chief inspector for the YugoslavFederal Secretariat of Internal Affairs.The spectators’ gallery in the trial chamber of theInternational Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia,or ICTY, separated from the courtroom by a thick pane ofglass, was mostly empty. A few handfuls of students andother onlookers were monitored by a pair of security guards,who would occasionally peer over the shoulders of notetakersto make sure they were not drawing any pictures ofthe proceedings. (This is a matter of policy; Davidovic isnot a protected witness and was testifying in open court.)The setting was serene, even sleepy, compared to theInternational Criminal Court located across town in TheHague. The ICC’s main gallery and public spaces were sopacked with groups of visitors during the last week of June2011 that public affairs staffers had to carefully coordinategroups of tours to avoid traffic jams within the building.To both its critics and supporters, the ICC is theculmination of an international justice movement that beganwith Nuremberg and continued with the ICTY, intendedto provide a forum for credibly prosecuting the worstviolations of international humanitarian law. The UnitedNations Security Council established the ICTY in 1993 asa temporary or “ad hoc” tribunal limited to prosecutingcrimes from the wars that followed the dissolution of theformer Yugoslavia. The ICC has a broader mandate: It isan autonomous, permanent tribunal established by treatyand run by its member nations, with jurisdiction beginningin July 2002 – when the treaty entered into force. Sincethen, the ICC has initiated proceedings for crimescommitted in several of the worst conflicts of the pastdecade, including those in Uganda, Darfur and DemocraticRepublic of Congo.As Davidovic sat in the witness chair at the ICTY, judgesat the ICC were preparing to issue arrest warrants forMuammar Gaddafi, his son and an intelligence official overthe conflict then unfolding in Libya. Theexcitement was palpable over the courttaking on another high-profile conflict;the ICC was the place to be.By contrast, the ICTY was – andremains – in the midst of its slowwind-down, with most of the casescompleted or on appeal. Davidovic wasone of about 200 witnesses eventuallycalled by the prosecution in the nearlytwo-year-long presentation of its caseagainst Karadzic, who is now set topresent his defense. Still, for anyonewho donned a headset and sat patientlythrough the simultaneous translations,the exchange between Karadzic andDavidovic had its share of drama. Andthe stakes remain high: The ICTY’scases, together with domestic justiceefforts in the former Yugoslavia, willeither bolster or undermine claims overthe value of criminal justice responses togross human rights violations, and maysignal whether the ICC has a realisticgoal of meeting its goal to end impunity.Karadzic served as President of the Republika Srpska,the self-declared Serb entity withinBosnia-Herzegovina, in the early Partners:to mid-1990s. He is accused of The offices ofgenocide, war crimes and crimes Vladimir Vukcevicagainst humanity for his alleged (right), Serbia'srole in the removal of Muslims war crimes prosecutor,and Sergeand Croats from areas in Bosniaclaimed by the Serbs. Prosecutors Brammertz, thecontend that he played a leadership chief prosecutorat the ICTY,role in the massacre in Srebrenicaof 7,000 to 8,000 Muslim men and have cooperatedboys in July 1995 (determined by on war crimesthe ICTY to be an act of genocide in investigationsan earlier case), as well as the siege since 2003.L A W D R A G O N 38 I s s u e 13Photo by: Andrej Isakovic/AFP/Getty Images/Newscom