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

former ICTY liaison officer Matias Hellman noted: “Proceedings take so long—three to eight
years from arrest until final judgment.” 465Sometimes years go by after the ICTY gains custody
of a defendant before his or her trial even begins; 466 then, the trial typically lasts over a year. 467
Although trials lasting years are rare (so far only five have lasted more than two years), they
have made an enduring impression.
In the subsections that follow, we address the impact of trial length on many Bosnians’
experience of justice. But this is not the only concern that lengthy ICTY processes pose. Many
Serbs—notably including individuals who support the ICTY—emphasize another problem:
The length of time that some defendants have spent awaiting trial, many in detention, is seen
as a violation of defendants’ right to a speedy trial. 468 (This is true even though defendants
themselves have often sought delays so they can better prepare for trial.) 469
As the Justice Initiative noted in its report on the ICTY’s impact in Serbia, “[m]any
Serbians can readily tick off how long some high-profile defendants had to await trial once the
ICTY obtained custody of them,” 470 and the same patterns are grounds for criticism among
Serbs in Bosnia. 471 While this alone hardly accounts for Bosnian Serbs’ antipathy toward the
ICTY, the practice, which has also raised concerns among international lawyers, provides
further grist for Serb nationalists’ efforts to sustain anti-Hague sentiment. 472 Moreover “[e]
xcessively long trials” themselves can “carry significant risks of unfairness to the accused,” 473
particularly when he represents himself at trial. To be sure, the ICTY is hardly unique in taking
a long time to investigate and prosecute war criminals. As this study highlights, a key area in
which internationalized tribunals or domestic courts trying mass atrocities would benefit from
improvement is in expediting trial proceedings without short-changing justice.
1. The trial without end: Slobodan Milošević
A lot of victims felt cheated when he died. 474
If they made a huge mistake it was the Milošević case. 475
For many, the marathon trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević is at once
emblematic of a pervasive problem at the ICTY—trials whose length extends beyond tolerable
limits—and a cautionary tale. After more than four years, the trial was within weeks of ending476
when the defendant died in his detention cell in March 2006. 477
As legal commentators have noted, “[t]he most ardent criticism of [the Milošević]
trial was that it was simply allowed to go on for too long.” 478 On this point, there is no daylight
between the views of commentators outside Bosnia and of Bosnian citizens. Nidžara
Ahmetašević recalled that in the early months of Milošević’s trial, “everybody watched it”
on television. “But it lasted so long.” And “by the end, only my father was still watching.” 479
Columnist Gojko Berić reflected the views of many when he said, “the pace of the proceed-
THAT SOMEONE GUILTY BE PUNISHED 73