CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — As the United States prepares to transfer Saddam Hussein into the custody of the newly formed Iraqi courts, a watershed event in war crimes justice will resume next week: the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
Most people have forgotten that the trial of the former Serbian president lumbers on at The Hague. Since the case began in February 2002, a tangle of bureaucratic setbacks has mired the trial in costly delays. Milosevic is accused of 66 counts of human rights abuses, from violations of the "customs of war" to genocide. After 298 witnesses, 30,000 pages of documents and millions of dollars, the case will reach its halfway point this week -- a level of inefficiency that has strained the patience of even the trial's most ardent defenders.
Though the concept of a war crimes tribunal still evokes a lofty notion of high-minded justice, the reality of the Milosevic case is a stark lesson in the complexity of pulling off such a proceeding. As the world braces for Hussein's trial, the Milosevic case provides a cautionary tale about the difficulty of implementing war crimes justice.
The Milosevic trial began with ambitious hopes of furthering peace and reconciliation in a war-torn region, affirming international support for human rights and reconstructing the historical record. But Milosevic, regarded by many as the driving force behind the civil war that killed 200,000 people in the Balkans in the 1990s, denies the legality of the tribunal and has undercut its progress at every turn. Acting as his own attorney, Milosevic's handling of the case risks trivializing the same crimes the court seeks to redress.
Weaknesses in the prosecution's case have prevented the trial from becoming an easy rallying ground for defenders of justice. After two years of testimony, attorneys have not produced any "smoking gun" evidence of Milosevic's guilt. Although a number of witnesses have gestured toward Milosevic's authority over Serbian forces, the chain of command in the fractured Balkan states remains murky, and the leadership of the splintered Serbian forces in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia hard to resolve.
When trial resumes July 5, its credibility will face even greater strains. Milosevic has announced his intent to call a staggering 1,631 witnesses, including U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former President Clinton, in his defense.
