International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia is a body of the United Nations established to prosecute war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. The tribunal functions as an ad-hoc independent court and is located in The Hague.

It was established by resolution 827 of the UN Security Council, which was passed on 25 May 1993. It has jurisdiction over certain types of crime committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991: grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide and crime against humanity. It can try only individuals, not organizations, governments etc. The maximum sentence it can impose is life imprisonment. Various countries have signed agreements with the UN to carry out custodial sentences.

Some of the critiques of the court include:

• A small portion of the indictees were accused of crimes committed against Serbs, while practically the whole Serb political and military establishment is indicted.
• The Court was established by the UN Security Council instead of the UN General Assembly which makes it seem like a court created by the Great Powers in order to try citizens of smaller nations.
• Many of the indictees are still not apprehended -- while this may not be in the jurisdiction of the court, it still badly reflects on its image.

Further, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the following about the court:

NATO countries are those that have provided the finance to set up the Tribunal, we are amongst the majority financiers, and of course to build a second chamber so that prosecutions can be speeded up so let me assure that we and the Tribunal are all one on this, we want to see war criminals brought to justice and I am certain that when Justice Arbour goes to Kosovo and looks at the facts she will be indicting people of Yugoslav nationality and I don't anticipate any others at this stage.

It uses the Serbo-Croatian language under a norm of its own called BCS (Bosnian Croatian, Serbian). Some Serbs accuse it of relying on Croat and Bosnian Muslim translators who utilize Croat and Bosnian neologisms (cf Croation linguistic purism).

Some indictees that are described on Wikipedia:

• Slobodan Milošević
• Biljana Plavšić
• Naser Orić
• Janko Bobetko

Other accused and/or indicted persons include but are not limited to, sorted approximately by rank/profile:

• Radovan Karadžić
• Momčilo Krajišnik
• Ratko Mladić
• Radislav Krstić
• Milan Martić
• Sefer Halilović
• Tihomir Blaškić
• Ante Gotovina
• Rahim Ademi
• Dario Kordić
• Mile Mrkšić
• Miroslav Radić
• Veselin Šljivančanin
• Mladen Tuta Naletilić
• Fatmir Limaj

A more complete list is available at ICTY fact sheet.

See also:

• International Criminal Court

External Links

• Official website of ICTY
• Jurist Milosevic Trial discussion