Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland
Coalition
for an International Criminal Court NATO-Yugoslav
War Internet Resources
Former
US Attorney General Ramsey Clark indicts NATO
leaders Articles
on the Rambouillet Agreement, war crimes and various legal
aspects of NATO aggression Human
Rights Watch: Civilian deaths in the NATO air
campaign Annex
to the indictment from the Yugoslav
government NATO
war crimes site in Greece In the District Court of
Belgrade on September 22, 2000, the President of the court,
Veroljub Raketic, handed down guilty verdicts against
government leaders of NATO countries for "war crimes". The
defendants in the trial were: Tony Blair, Robin Cook, George
Robertson, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen,
Jacques Chirac, Hubert Vedrine, Alain Richard, Gerhard
Schroeder, Joschka Fischer, Rudolf Scharping, Javier Solana
and Wesley Clark - all of which were sentenced to 20 years
in a Yugoslav prison. The Yugoslav government issued arrest
warrants for all of them, charging that between March 24 and
June 10, 1999, during the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, they
carried out:: On April 18th 2001, it was
reported that the former U.S. president Bill Clinton was
sent a verdict sentencing him in absentia to 20 years in
prison for "crimes against civilians" committed during
NATO's 1999 attack on Yugoslavia. According to news reports,
Clinton, and his lawyers, also received a decision on the
issuing of a warrant for his arrest. With the NATO bombardment of
Yugoslavia, British Prime Minister Tony Blair dropped more
bombs on the country than the previous Conservative
government did in 18 years. Blair now leads a government
which attacks or invades countries without UN approval - the
sending of British troops to Sierra Leone in the latest
example ("to secure the airport, safeguard British nationals
life etc."); the continuing criminal attacks by the UK and
the U.S. on the defenceless people of Iraq (under the
justification of their own self-declared "no-fly-zone') is
another; but it is the attacks against Yugoslavia which has
led to the British government ministers being accused of war
crimes by numerous human rights groups, and indictments
submitted to that effect to the International War Crimes
Tribunal by Professor Michael Mandel and others, as well as
lawyers from many other countries (see below). As with Iraq, the attacks on
Yugoslavia led to widespread loss of civilian life (some
claims put the loss at over 1000 life's) and the almost
complete economic destruction of the country - now ranked
poorer in Europe than Albania. By all accounts, the NATO
bombing was indiscriminate, killing farmers, suburbanites,
city dwellers, factory workers, reporters, diplomats, people
in cars, busses and trains, hospital patients, the elderly
and children. However, he former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic and other key officials have
also been accused of war crimes and specifically charged
with the murder of 387 civilians in the war-torn Yugoslav
province of Kosovo. Read that indictment here:
The
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia:
The prosecutor of the trial against Slobodan Milosevic,
Milan Milutinovic, Nikola Sainovic, Dragoljub Ojdanic and
Vlajko Stojilkovic.
Two of the
Bosnian Serb leaders have also been charged by the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia -
ex-President Radovan Karadzic and Genaral Ratko Mladic.
Read their indictment
here: There are also
two outstanding cases aat the International Criminal
Tribunal alleging genocide by Yugoslavia in Croatia and
Bosnia and Herzegovina: On April 24th
2001, the Information Service of the Yugoslav Army General
Staff stated that a criminal investigation had begun against
245 soldiers, and that indictments had been issued against
183 for crimes committed in Kosovo from March 1st, 1998, to
June 26th, 1999. They were charged with killing civilains
and scores of other crimes. The statement, in response to a
story in The Observer of April 22nd 2001 that had claimed a
Yugoslav Military Court had discovered Serb War Crimes unit.
The Yugoslav Army denied this, claiming it "without valid
proof". The newspaper had said that the Yugoslav Army had a
unit for burning bodies and erasing traces of Albanians
killed during the war in Kosovo, and about its soldiers
burning 3,000 bodies in the Trepca mine. Yet, neither the British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, his Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, or
Defence Secretary George Robertson (now head of NATO) have
been charged with war crimes despite the fact that their
military forces oversaw the murder of well over 500 Yugoslav
civilians. Yet, little, if any media coverage has been given
to the numerous lawsuits now issued against the leaders of
NATO for alleged war crimes carried out during the attack on
Yugoslavia. There at least 20 cases currently in process or
before the courts, including: Campbell
et al. v. William Jefferson Clinton (complaint filed in
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, April
30, 1999)
See
also
Press
release from the office of U.S. Congressman Tom
Campbell
Yugoslavia's
Proceeding Against 10 NATO States (International Court of
Justice, April 29, 1999) UKRAINE
WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL CONDEMNS WASHINGTON,
NATO Text of the
indictment prepared by Ramsey Clark:
INDEPENDENT
COMMISSION OF INQUIRY HEARING TO INVESTIGATE U.S./NATO
WAR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE OF
YUGOSLAVIA Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v. Belgium)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Canada)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
France)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Germany)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Italy)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Netherlands)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Portugal)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v.
Spain)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v. United
Kingdom)
Legality
of Use of Force (Yugoslavia v. United States of
America)
Oral
Pleadings with the International Court of Justice -
Request for Provisional Measures May 10, 1999 Part
II (Yugoslavia v. Belgium; in
French)
As noted by Amnesty
International, the precise number of civilians who died as a
result of NATO air attacks is not known. Yugoslav estimates
of civilian deaths are certainly contradictory, but some
official public estimates put the number of civilian deaths
in "the thousands." The most detailed official account of
the damage caused by the NATO bombing is NATO Crimes in
Yugoslavia (The White Book), which is published by the
Yugoslav
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This is the most detailed official account of the damage
caused by the NATO bombing. It lists around 400 civilians
killed in over 40 incidents involving civilian fatalities,
although it seems clear from the text of The White
Book that it does not represent a complete list of all
civilians killed in the NATO bombing. Reuters reported on 23
March 2000 a new Yugoslav government estimate of 1,002 army
and police known to have either died or gone missing. The
government did not make clear whether this was only during
the air strikes. According to Human Rights Watch, between
489 and 528 Yugoslav civilians were killed in 90 incidents.
NATO's actions were illegal
even under it's own treaty - which does not permit it to
undertake aggressive military action without a UN mandate.
Thus, Amnesty International said that the way in which NATO
conducted it's illegal Blitzkrieg against Yugoslavia
resulted in the forces ordered in by both the British Prime
Minister and the U.S. President committing a number of
serious war crimes including the unlawful killing of
civilians. In a 60-page report, Amnesty
International said that on the basis of available evidence,
including NATO's own statements and accounts of specific
incidents, they believed that : Amnesty point to several
incidents classified by them as "war crimes": the 23rd April
1999 attack on the headquarters of Serbian state Television
and Radio (RTS), in which NATO aircraft killed 16 civilians.
Commenting on this case,
Amnesty said: In other attacks, including the
12th April bombing of Grdelica railroad bridge, which killed
12 civilians, and the missile attack on Varvarin bridge on
30th May, which killed 11 civilians, NATO aircraft failed to
suspend their attack after it was evident that they had
struck civilians. In other attacks, including those which
resulted in the highest number of civilian casualties (the
attacks on displaced Albanians near Djakovica on 14th April,
and in Korisa on 13th May, whose combined death toll
exceeded 120) NATO failed to take necessary precautions to
minimize civilian casualties. In June 2000, The NATO's
foreign affairs select committee of the British parliament
said that the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia was illegal
under international law. The select committee also concluded
that as NATO is a "defensive alliance" it had no power under
its treaty to launch a war against Yugoslavia without the
specific authority of the United Nations (UN). The
overwhelming mass of evidence given to the committee ruled
that the bombing of Yugoslavia was illegal under
international law. Emyr Jones Parry, the Foreign Office
political director, insisted the NATO aggression was legal,
but admitted in evidence to the committee that "normally"
the UK has one of three legal justifications for military
action against a country: None of these criteria actually
pertained in this case to justify NATO aggression against
Yugoslavia. It is clear now that both the
U.S. and the UK governments deliberately waged war against
Yugoslavia with the authority of the UN because it knew at
best both Russia and China (and possibly France) would use
their veto on the UN Security Council to prevent any
military action without specific UN approval. At worse, it
also refused to recognise the authority in this matter
because both governments knew they could their version of
events in Kosovo would not stand up to independent scrutiny
- i.e., the persistent claims and propaganda by both British
and U.S. government ministers of widespread killings - one
British government Defence minister - without any proof,
claimed that some 10,000 Albanians had been killed - some in
the U.S. speculated that it could be as high as
100,000. Apparently, during the NATO
air-strikes the then British government's attorney general,
John Morris, questioned the legality of the bombing. The
foreign affairs select committee also queried whether the
bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was a genuine
mistake. According to a report in The Guardian, The
committee was given detailed evidence suggesting that the
bombing of the embassy was not a great strategic blunder,
but a deliberate move by the Americans aimed at knocking out
what they later claimed was "a telecommunications post'.
(7th June, 2000). The members of the committee
also conclude that the Contact Group, led by the Americans,
placed "unreal demands" on the Yugoslavs during the
negotiations at Rambouillet,
near Paris, including the requirement that NATO troops be
allowed "free movement" inside the whole of
Yugoslavia. On January 5th 2000, it was
announced that the Yugoslav government would step us
pressure to indict leaders of NATO countries, notably the
Tony Blair, and the US President Bill Clinton, for war
crimes and crimes against humanity during the NATO onslaught
against Yugoslavia in 1999. On April 29, 1999 Yugoslavia
had submitted a demand for instigating proceedings before
the International Court of Justice. On June 30th 1999, the
International Court of Justice set a deadline for the start
of legal action. In keeping with this, the Yugoslavia met
the Court's deadline on January 5th 2000, by filing a demand
for proceedings against the NATO countries. Most of this has
been hardly been reported in the mainstream Western press.
However, on the official Yugoslav
government website
it was stated: It is not only the Yugoslav
government which is attempting to indict the NATO countries.
On 8th January 2000, Human Rights Watch announced that
NATO's conduct during the war "breached international law",
and said it was drawing up detailed reports to be submitted
to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. The organisation
accuses NATO of: The dossier of alleged war
crimes by NATO given to the war crimes tribunal by Human
Rights Watch follows that of a group of international
lawyers led by Michael Mandel, a law professor at York
University in Toronto, Canada, and one from the Yugoslav
government. Below is a indictment for war crimes and crimes
against humanity given to the International War Crimes
Tribunal on 6th May 1999 by a group of international
lawyers, mainly based in Canada. It alleges that the leaders
of the 19 NATO countries which attacked Yugoslavia in 1999
are responsible for war crimes and crimes against
humanity. The background to this
indictment is simple: The President of the Tribunal, Judge
Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, in a press release of April 8,
1999, had urged that: This was added to on April 30,
1999, when in Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights Mary Robinson, in a speech to the
Commission, cited a letter from the Prosecutor in which the
Prosecutor stated: The attack on Yugoslavia was
carried out without the legal sanction of the United
Nations. The indictment alleges that the NATO alliance and
its political leadership, led by Bill Clinton and Tony
Blair, carried out war crimes and crimes against humanity
and serious breaches of international law. These include:
the bombing of hospitals, schools and the use of cluster
bombs against civilian targets; a deliberate attempt to
assassinate Milosevic, when his residence was destroyed by
NATO missiles; the killing of Albanian refugees by NATO
bombers, and deliberate attempts to destroy Yugoslavia's
water supply, and thus encourage the spread of disease and
ill-health. Dr Will Podmore, writing in
The Lancet (June 26th 1999), confirmed this, stating
that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia had "damaged many
clinical and hospital centres", including the hospital of
Dragisa Misovic in the Yugoslav capital Belgrade in which
three people were killed and the operating theatres
destroyed. Another crime committed by NATO, and sanctioned
by it's political leaders, was the bombing of all the
bridges across the international waterway through eastern
Europe, the River Danube. During these attacks - during
which some bridges were bombed despite the fact that there
were civilian protesters on them - water supplies were cut
off, and according to Dr Podmore, the largest Yugoslav
centre for the treatment of cardiovascular disease was left
without water. Podmore further notes that "NATO leaders have
claimed that these incidents were accidents" but have
admitted that NATO's leaders have admitted that they were
the "inevitable result" of their bombing strategy. He then
observes: The clear strategy of NATO has
been to destroy the whole infrastructure of the Yugoslav
state: its public services, including health and education,
water, sewage, electricity and the agricultural production,
the whole rail and road network, and the closing of the
international waterway, the River Danube. This has been
backed up by the attempt - which appears to have failed - to
destroy the military capabilities of the Yugoslav armed
forces, and the continuing attempt to smash the Yugoslav
federation by encouraging separatism in the Yugoslav
republic of Montenegro, the Hungarian speaking region of
northern Serbia, and of course, among the Albanian majority
in the province the Kosovo-Metohija. The long-term aim of
NATO's strategy has not to bring human rights and justice to
Kosovo-Metohija, but to detach this province from Yugoslavia
and foster the breakup of the Federation, which has so far
this century, has not only survived, but defied numerous
attempts by countries such as Germany (in 1941 and 1991) the
smash it once and for all. Now that the overt war against
Yugoslavia is over, it is clear that the Albanian question
in Yugoslavia and the future of Kosovo-Metohija were not the
main issues driving the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia.
Comments made in July 1999 by the former Swedish Prime
Minister Carl Bildt, indicate that the fact that Yugoslavia
does not have a so-called "free market", and is today, the
only European country to have a largely Socialist-based
economy, is the main reason behind the deep-rooted hostility
of NATO towards Yugoslavia. Like with Montenegro today, the
plight of Yugoslavia's Albanian minority has been the
pretext to destroy a country that refuses to accept the
"free market" and thus its entrance into Europe's "nations
of nations", as the EU has been referred to. It gave the
NATO alliance the excuse to sidetrack the UN and launch a
massive air bombing campaign. In June 2000, the Russian and
Chinese representatives on the United Nations Security
Council sharply criticized The Hague tribunal, accusing it
of "being politicized, one-sided and biased". At a council
session, the two ambassadors severely criticized the
tribunal for failing to open an investigation against NATO
for crimes committed in bombing civilians in Yugoslavia.
Russia accused the court of having political ambitions and
practising an anti-Serb policy, and stated that "Everything
indicates that the Hague tribunal has in advance determined
the guilty parties in the Yugoslav tragedy by closing its
eyes to crimes committed by Croats and Muslims . .
.". Now the war is over, and NATO
troops are now in occupation of Kosovo-Metohija on behalf of
the UN, the genocide continues: According to the UNHCR,
almost 250,000 Yugoslav citizens of Montenegrin, Roma or
Serb origin have fled the province. By September 2000, the
Yugoslav government has documented over 1000 murders alone
believed to have been carried out by the CIA-supported KLA,
whom, many observers in the Balkans believe, will be
installed in power in Kosovo-Metohija, once the province is
detached from the Yugoslav Federation by NATO. The
subversion of Yugoslavia continues with political
assassinations of key officials in the government and
economy, and support given by NATO to political parties in
Montenegro which favour separation from Yugoslavia. Read all
about these latest developments here in NATO
preparing new military strikes in the Balkans by Gregory
Elich In the interests of justice and
international law the International War Crimes Tribunal
(IWCT) should bring these indictments against those named
below, so they can be brought to justice in The Hague for
their alleged involvement in genocide and the sanctioning of
crimes against humanity during the NATO assault on
Yugoslavia. Failure of the IWCT would allow NATO leaders to
assume that they will never be challenged legally and that
they could attack other countries - such as Cuba for example
- using the same pretext that they attacked Yugoslavia,
further undermining international law and the role of the
United Nations in resolving conflicts by peaceful means
between states. Read the Indictment of NATO
leaders HERE
A picture by the
Lithuanian artist Jurate Macnoriute. Visit his web
pages here: The
Anti-war Art of Jurate Macnoriute
"This is an historic
opportunity to demonstrate the even-handedness of
international justice" - Michael
Mandel, law
professor, York University, Toronto, Canada,
1999
NATO leaders found guilty of
war crimes in Yugoslavia
"NATO leaders acted
in open violation of the Protocol Additional to the
Geneva Conventions of 12th August 1949, and the
Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts
(Protocol I), 8th June 1977 . . ." Dr Will Podmore,
The
Lancet
(June 26th
1999)
Legal cases against
Yugoslavia
The
International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia: The prosecutor of the trial against Radovan
Karadzic and Genaral Ratko Mladic
Application
of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the
crime of genocide (Croatia vs Yugoslavia)
Scores of current legal cases
against NATO leaders
Complaint
to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (Professor Michael Mandel, Osgoode Hall Law
School, Toronto, Canada et al., May 6,
1999)
Human rights groups confirm
widespread civilian casualties from NATO attack
"Whatever their
intentions -- NATO forces did commit serious violations
of the laws of war leading in a number of cases to the
unlawful killings of civilians".
Amnesty
International recognizes that disrupting government
propaganda may help to undermine the morale of the
population and the armed forces, but believes that
justifying an attack on a civilian facility on such
grounds stretches the meaning of "effective contribution
to military action" and "definite military advantage"
beyond the acceptable bounds of interpretation. Under the
requirements of Article 52(2) of Protocol I, the RTS
headquarters cannot be considered a military objective.
As such, the attack on the RTS headquarters violated the
prohibition to attack civilian objects contained in
Article 52 (I) and therefore constitutes a war
crime.
Parliamentary committee in
Britain concedes attack was illegal under international
law
Yugoslavia indicts NATO
leaders
"Yugoslavia demands
that the Court declare these countries responsible for
the violation of major international obligations, which
ban the implementation of force against countries,
interference into their internal affairs or the violation
of their sovereignty, as well as other international
obligations. The indictment also included the demand for
confirming the responsibility of these countries for
their failure to prevent the genocide against the Serb
people and other non-Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, in
which way they violated the obligations stemming from
U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 and the Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide Crimes . . .
Yugoslavia is also demanding that the Court instruct all
countries, which are being sued to pay compensation for
all the damages inflicted".
All States and
organisations in possession of information pertaining to
the alleged commission of crimes within the jurisdiction
of the Tribunal should make such information available
without delay to the Prosecutor.
The actions of
individuals belonging to Serb forces, the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA), or NATO may come under scrutiny,
if it appears that serious violations of international
humanitarian law have occurred.
NATO attack targeted water
supplies, health care, sewage and other public
services
"Therefore NATO
leaders acted in open violation of the Protocol
Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12th August 1949,
and the Protection of Victims of International Armed
Conflicts (Protocol I), 8th June 1977 . . ."
NATO's plan is to destroy
Yugoslavia