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

ings … went before any expectations. This was really too much.” 480 Another journalist, Ivan
Lovrenović, cites the Milošević trial as the prime example of “extreme inefficiency” on the part
of the ICTY. The “whole thing turned into a bureaucratic labyrinth” and, in the end, “we had
no appropriate verdict.” 481 Even a lawyer, Sevima Sali-Terzić, had a hard time “understand[ing]
why the Milošević trial lasted so long.” 482
There is now a rich literature of lessons learned from the Milošević trial, and this study
does not revisit ground that has been well plowed by others who have closely analyzed the case.
But in view of the special impact the trial has had on the ICTY’s standing in Bosnia, we note
here several further themes that arose often in our interviews with Bosnians.
While the need to accommodate the defendant’s precarious health situation was a major
factor behind the trial’s length, 483 many in Bosnia fault the Tribunal’s prosecutor and judges.
Berić believes the “main responsibility” for “prolonging this process for so long … should
be placed on [ former Prosecutor Carla] Del Ponte.” In Berić’s view, Del Ponte tried to prove
too much, and in the end lost the chance to prove anything: She “wrote an indictment that
is a novel, meaning she made a novel of this indictment. It’s too extensive, unnecessarily.” 484
While we found this view to be widely held among the Bosnian intellectuals we interviewed,
there may be a counterpoint when it comes to Bosnians’ expectations: Bosnian victims have
rallied in protest against ICTY efforts to apply “lessons learned from the Milošević case” by
trimming the number of charges or crime scenes to be proved in the trial of Bosnian Serb
wartime leader Radovan Karadžić. 485
Whatever the precise causes of the trial’s length, that Milošević died before judgment
has left Bosnians vexed by a sense that a streamlined case would have yielded a verdict. “Maybe
if the case had been shorter,” Dobrila Govedarica speculates,” [Milošević] would have lived to
judgment.” 486 Others think the point is clear. Srebrenica survivor Hatidža Mehmetović said the
trial of Milošević went on “for too long, way too long, so that he was not in a position to even
live long enough to be faced with a verdict.” She continued: “This was a huge price for not
only victims of … crimes committed in Srebrenica but for all of Bosnia as such.” 487 Tarik Jusić
implicitly links Milošević’s death to the unwarranted length of the ICTY’s trials, 488 which he
describes as the “weakest” dimension of its work. Like Mehmetović, Jusić believes the costs of
Milošević’s death without judgment to be huge, describing this as the “most negative” aspect
of the ICTY’s record. 489
Saying “this case should have been completed,” Srebrenica survivor Kada Hotić evokes
what she believes was lost by the death of Milošević. “Truth be told,” she said, it was not the
goal of any victim “to have defendants suffer, but simply to have them serve their sentences so
this whole story becomes a part of the truth of everything that happened.” 490 With his death,
Milošević’s role in Bosnia’s tragedy would not become part of the judicial truth.
By this measure, Milošević’s death before judgment was an incalculable loss. The prosecution’s
case placed Milošević at the epicenter of the violence that engulfed the Balkans in
the 1990s, encompassing crimes committed in Kosovo, Bosnia, and Croatia. Of particular
74 ACHIEVEMENTS, FAILURES, AND PERFORMANCE