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

H. Removing Dangerous People
Although our Bosnian interlocutors did not identify incapacitation and/or removal of dangerous
individuals as a goal they hoped the ICTY would achieve, many implied as much. As we
discuss in Chapter IV, a common criticism of the ICTY is that it left people who were responsible
for harrowing crimes in positions of influence. Conversely, in at least one notable instance,
the removal of individuals indicted by the ICTY was seen as a contributing factor behind
individuals’ willingness to return to homes from which they had been “ethnically cleansed.” 215
Another recent study of Bosnian views found that criticisms of the Tribunal on the
ground that it had failed to bring about the removal of war criminals were especially likely to
be voiced by those “who had particularly suffered.” The author of this study writes that these
individuals had expected the ICTY “to severely punish all war criminals with harsh prison
sentences and to have a significant impact at the level of their communities; they had expected
to be able to go about their daily lives without encountering people whom they claim are guilty
of war crimes.” 216
I. Spurring the Creation of a Domestic War Crimes
Chamber
At the time the ICTY was created, no one conceived of it as an institution whose core aims
would include strengthening local capacity to prosecute war crimes trials. As we note in Chapter
VI, the very creation of the Tribunal “inevitably represented a judgment by the international
community that local courts in the Balkans were largely unable to mount credible prosecutions
of wartime atrocities,” and for years efforts to secure justice focused almost entirely on
the ICTY.
Yet developing a strong domestic partner in the project of establishing criminal accountability
for wartime atrocities later became a key goal of the ICTY. 217 In partnership with the
Office of the High Representative, the ICTY played a major role in planning for a specialized
war crimes chamber in the new Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, launched in 2005. Against
this backdrop, even though Bosnians did not initially look to the ICTY to help enhance their
domestic capacity to prosecute war crimes, today its contribution in this regard is widely cited
as one of the Tribunal’s “major achievements.” 218
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