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

enica survivor Kada Hotić describes cases in which high-profile ICTY defendants have represented
themselves as proceedings in which “a defendant simply makes a circus of this court
whenever they are willing.” 503 (The “circus” metaphor arose often in our interviews in Bosnia
on this topic.) As Radovan Karadžić seemed to tie the ICTY up in a blizzard of motions before
his trial even began, Nidžara Ahmetašević noted, Bosnians were “really disappointed because
the court is letting him do that. People are losing confidence in the ICTY because of that.” 504
3. Beyond Milošević
Concerns about the length of trial proceedings in specific cases shade into a growing sense
that the ICTY is taking far too long to provide justice in the broader sense of its work. Saša
Madacki, who directs the Human Rights Centre at the University of Sarajevo, described a
widely held view among Bosnians: “Ordinary people will ask you how Nuremberg took one
year and this [process] is taking 20 years.” As for his own view, Madacki said: “I am very supportive
of the work of the Tribunal, though I strongly believe improvements [should be made
in speeding up its] procedures.” Like many who made this point, Madacki added: “I’m not
saying there should be a three-day trial and then hang somebody outside of the Tribunal.” 505
It would be difficult to exaggerate the cumulative effect of the length and complexity of
ICTY procedures. It can seem a staggering weight, dragging public confidence downward as it
grows heavier with the passage of years. While the length of trial proceedings alone does not
account for the lengthiness of the Tribunal’s work, many in Bosnia believe that the Tribunal’s
slow pace has blunted its contributions and compounded the challenges associated with delays
in arresting indictees.
For example, Sevima Sali-Teržić points out the high costs of delayed justice on political
progress and social repair in Bosnia. “In the beginning,” she said, “it was possible to have
improvements with justice.” Citing the international community’s failure to arrest Radovan
Karadžić, who at the time of our interview with Sali-Teržić in late 2006 was still a fugitive from
justice, and Ratko Mladić, she wondered if “it’s too late. Our ethnic relations are terrible…. Too
much time was given to those who began the war to be in power after the war … to pretend
that we have working ethnic relations.” 506
Even at the outset, ICTY supporters had to contend with an overwhelming sense of the
ICTY as a heavy bureaucratic machine that was out of step with their country’s urgent need
for justice. Branko Todorović evoked this when he contrasted the toxic chokehold of many
wartime Bosnian Serb leaders with the lumbering bureaucracy he encountered in The Hague:
I want to tell you that in my opinion they made a first mistake: the majority of people
working there are most probably the highest ranking in the judicial profession, but at
the same time they are a high-ranking supreme bureaucracy, too. They have bylaws
of the court, documents of the court, “we have certain international standards and of
76 ACHIEVEMENTS, FAILURES, AND PERFORMANCE