c1aee61a   
   XPost: alt.crime, alt.true-crime, alt.politics.bush   
   XPost: alt.politics.republicans   
   From: nsmontassoc@yahoo.com   
      
   On 4/26/2012 5:25 AM, Ollie North wrote:   
   > “Why Bashir and not Bush?”   
   >   
   >   
   > The average U.S. citizen lacks the intelligence, interest, education   
   > and informational insight to accept that his or her own country has   
   > produced so-called leaders who have directed and ordered the   
   > commission of crimes against humanity and war crimes.   
   >   
   > =======================   
   > "Charles Taylor verdict expected in international court’s war-crimes   
   > trial"   
   >   
   >   
   > By Edward Cody   
   > April 25,  2012   
   >   
   >   
   >   
   > THE HAGUE — For the thousands of young men whose limbs were hacked   
   > off, the verdict will come way too late. Too late as well for the   
   > teenage boys sent into battle high on dope. And for the pubescent   
   > girls turned into rebel warriors’ sex slaves, who will harbor   
   > unspeakable memories until they die, no matter what the court decides.   
   >   
   > But on Thursday morning, a full decade after the vicious Sierra Leone   
   > war was quelled, the U.N. Special Court for Sierra Leone will hand   
   > down a verdict on the responsibility of former Liberian president   
   > Charles Taylor in promoting and financing the butchery in West Africa.   
   >   
   > The decision handed down by the court in a leafy suburb of The Hague   
   > will mark a milestone in an accelerating and sometimes controversial   
   > effort to create an international justice system.   
   >   
   > Taylor will become the first sitting or former head of state to be   
   > judged for conduct in a war that was considered — by still-emerging   
   > international standards — so treacherous as to be illegal. Prosecutors   
   > allege that he used his power as president of neighboring Liberia to   
   > advise and provide resources and weapons to Sierra Leone’s rebels,   
   > whose uprising he viewed as similar to the guerrilla movement he had   
   > led in his own country.   
   >   
   > Some critics say such courts have become an impediment to ridding the   
   > world of some unsavory leaders, who cling to power for their own   
   > protection. But international justice activists counter that the goal   
   > is to make atrocities dangerous for wartime leaders, so that they will   
   > think twice before ordering or committing them.   
   >   
   > “We have the International Criminal Court, permanent, increasingly   
   > powerful, casting a long shadow,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon   
   > said recently. “There is no going back. In this new age of   
   > accountability, those who commit the worst of human crimes will be   
   > held responsible.”   
   >   
   > As soon as the recent war in Libya wound down, for instance, Moammar   
   > Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam and his intelligence chief, Abdullah al-   
   > Senussi, were charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC) here   
   > for their roles in supervising the killing of civilians during the   
   > uprising against Gaddafi’s rule. The rebels have refused to hand over   
   > Saif al-Islam, however, and Senussi is being held in Mauritania while   
   > the government there figures out what to do with him.   
   >   
   > Gaddafi also was charged, but he was killed soon after his capture by   
   > rebel forces.   
   >   
   > The pace of the proceedings in The Hague’s tranquil international   
   > courtrooms has been cited as one of the major problems with the half-   
   > dozen international courts headquartered here. The International   
   > Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for instance, has been   
   > grinding away for nearly two decades, at a cost of more than $120   
   > million a year financed mostly by taxpayers from U.N. member   
   > countries.   
   >   
   > In addition, international justice has pursued only war leaders whose   
   > prosecution is politically acceptable, such as despised African   
   > warlords or the losing side in the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, the   
   > United States has refused to ratify the 1998 treaty founding the ICC,   
   > fearing that U.S. troops or officials could get dragged into   
   > uncontrollable proceedings by victims of U.S. foreign wars.   
   >   
   > “The greatest challenge, in my view, facing international justice at   
   > this point is whether it is capable of taking on cases which powerful   
   > states consider undesirable,” said Guenael Mettraux, a veteran defense   
   > lawyer at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former   
   > Yugoslavia.   
   >   
   > Elise Keppler, a Human Rights Watch lawyer specializing in   
   > international justice, said international prosecutions remain a form   
   > of victor’s justice, because powerful countries, including the United   
   > States, refuse to extend the international court’s authority beyond   
   > certain limits.   
   >   
   > In the 1980s, when the International Court of Justice ruled against   
   > the United States for mining a harbor in Nicaragua, the Reagan   
   > administration used its sway in the U.N. Security Council to block   
   > compensation to the Sandinista government.   
   >   
   > “Why Bashir and not Bush?” Keppler asked, referring to Sudanese   
   > President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, charged with war crimes in the Darfur   
   > conflict, and the U.S. president who launched the Iraq war. “The   
   > reason is the U.N. Security Council. The court’s jurisdiction is   
   > limited.”   
   >   
   > A slow process   
   >   
   >   
   > In addition to Taylor, several other senior leaders are facing   
   > possible prosecution for their purported roles in atrocities. But the   
   > wheels of justice seem particularly slow in the international   
   > courtrooms of The Hague, where witnesses come from afar and   
   > marshalling evidence is difficult and expensive.   
   >   
   > “So far, I do not think that states have quite decided to trust   
   > international justice unequivocally and endow it with the resources   
   > and capability necessary to make it most effective,” Mettraux said.   
   >   
   > The best-known case was that of former president Slobodan Milosevic,   
   > who directed Serbian forces from Belgrade during Yugoslavia’s violent   
   > breakup in the 1990s. Milosevic stood trial before the International   
   > Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia here. But he died in   
   > prison in 2006 before a verdict was handed down.   
   >   
   > In addition, Radovan Karadzic, a psychiatrist who was president of the   
   > Bosnian Serbs during the war in Bosnia, was arrested in 2008 after a   
   > decade as a fugitive and is being tried by the Yugoslavia tribunal.   
   > His military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, was taken into custody in May,   
   > after 15 years on the run. Although apparently in ill health, he also   
   > was brought to The Hague to stand trial.   
   >   
   > Elsewhere, former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was jailed by   
   > the ICC last year on charges of crimes against humanity and is in a   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)