That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

38. As we note in Chapter VI, then UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali recognized
the role of national courts in prosecuting the atrocities then under way. But under the prevailing
circumstances, Bosnian courts were hardly seen as credible vehicles for justice.
39. See David Tolbert and Aleksandar Kontić, Final Report of the International Criminal Law
Services (ICLS) Experts on the Sustainable Transition of the Registry and International Donor Support
to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina
in 2009 ( Dec. 15, 2008).
40. Report on the Judicial Status of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
and the Prospects for Referring Certain Cases to National Courts, June 2002, annexed to
Letter dated 17 June 2002 from the Secretary-General addressed to the Security Council, UN Doc.
S/2002/678, para. 49.
41. See especially Chapter VI.
42. Interview with Mirsad Tokača, president, Research and Documentation Center Sarajevo,
Sarajevo, July 24, 2009.
43. Interview with Nidžara Ahmetašević, editor, Balkan Investigative Reporters Network in BiH,
July 13, 2009.
2. Background
44. The resolution creating the Tribunal, S.C. Res. 827 (May 25, 1993) was preceded by a resolution
adopted three months earlier in which the Security Council decided that the ICTY “shall be
established” and directed the Secretary-General to submit a proposal for constituting the court. S.C.
Res. 808 (Feb. 22, 1993).
45. The international media played an important role in exposing the atrocities underway in
Bosnia. A breakthrough series appeared in Newsday starting on August 2, 1992. Newsday journalist
Roy Gutman reported on “concentration camps in which more than a thousand civilians have been
executed or starved and thousands more are being held until they die.” Roy Gutman, “Bosnia’s
Camps of Death,” Newsday, Aug. 2, 1992. Gutman, soon joined by other journalists, continued to
report on the Bosnian atrocities in real time.
46. A major difference between Bosnia and Croatia is that Serbs were a relatively small minority
in Croatia (roughly 12 percent of its prewar population) but a much larger minority in Bosnia,
almost one-third of its prewar population.
47. In the initial phase of the war, Bosniaks and Croats joined forces against a common enemy,
but the alliance collapsed in autumn 1992 and for the next three years Bosnia was engulfed in
conflict, with all three major groups fighting each other.
48. Writing that the Security Council created the ICTY for both “[g]ood and bad reasons,” Aryeh
Neier explains what he meant by the latter: Creating the Tribunal “was a substitute for effective
action to halt Serb depredations in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Aryeh Neier, War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide,
Terror and the Struggle for Justice, p. 112 (Times Books, 1998) [hereafter War Crimes]. Similarly,
journalist Pierre Hazan writes that Western leaders’ motivation in creating the ICTY “is more to
reassure the public than to formulate concrete responses in the domain of preventive diplomacy.”
Pierre Hazan, Justice in a Time of War: The True Story behind the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia, p. 41 (Texas A&M Univ. Press 2004) [hereafter Justice in a Time of War].
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