In other words, instead of the amicus curiae serving as a friend of the court to benefit neither the accused nor the prosecutor, in the case against Slobodan Milosevic the Hague tribunal is abusing this institution in order to impose a per force defender upon Milosevic underneath its veil. And then the secretary of the tribunal appointed Englishman Steven Kay, Dutchman Michail Wladimiroff and our own Branislav Tapuskovic as Milosevic's per force "attorneys" as if they were, in fact, amici curiae.
< Why did the Hague tribunal do this? According to the rules of criminal trial which the Hague tribunal prescribed for itself and which it has changed no less than twenty times (?!) in less than seven years, no provision was made for the institution of a public defender appointed by the tribunal in the event the accused should refuse to appoint a defender of his own choosing. Instead, rule 44 G establishes that the accused can decide to defend himself or themselves and must advise the secretary of the tribunal of this intent in writing.
The tribunal, of course, assumed that none of the accused would defend themselves without an attorney in the impossible hope that their defense may prove successful. Then Slobodan Milosevic appeared on the scene. He comprehended - at least we hope he has - that it is impossible to defend oneself before this tribunal and anyway you look at it, he's going to end up with four or live life sentences that not even Methuselah would outlive. Since that is the case, why would he give legitimacy to such a court by participating in his case with an appointed defender and thus support the illusion that it is a truly valid and just hearing? That is why he has brought the legitimacy of the tribunal into question by refusing to recognize it and rejected to participate in any way in the case against him, which he has already lost.
At that point in time, the tribunal itself became seriously concerned. Because what kind of hearing can it hold before the eyes of the world public if the accused doesn't defend himself and doesn't have an attorney representing him, choosing instead to attack the tribunal and ultimately force the tribunal to eject him from the courtroom altogether by uttering some vile word? In that case, the long planned and very expensive hearing would no longer be followed by any of the journalists because who's crazy enough to watch a soap opera without a key character? This in order to solve this distasteful problem, the tribunal contrived to appoint per force attorneys for Milosevic under the guise of the institution of amicus curiae, thus violating his freely expressed will.
Having thus determined the clear rationale for the Hague tribunal's actions in this case, it is also useful to consider the motives which have inspired the so-called attorneys, first and foremost, Branislav Tapuskovic, to allegedly defend Milosevic as friends of the court of which the prosecutor is an inseparable part.
When our own compatriot is in question, the primary motive is money. Every Hague indictee is a golden goose for our attorneys because in complex cases the Hague tribunal pays as much $15,000; after payment of all expenses, at least half of that is left over as net income. Since it will take at least three years to conclude the main hearing in Milosevic's case, Tapuskovic decided for the sake of these $270,000, to deprive Milosevic's top-notch team of attorneys, whom he selected of his own free will and who are already working for him in a big way, of their income and perhaps of the very bread that feeds them. To our best knowledge, the stealing of clients is not permitted by the attorney code of ethics. Although it is also true that as far back as June 1981 Tapuskovic was appointed by Venijamin Perovic to serve as the public defender in the shameful case against [Serbian poet] Gojko Djogo so it is not excluded that in addition to domestic reserves, he wants to be close to those of the masters of the world in the case against Milosevic.
The only thing left is for us to conclude that in this case the Hague tribunal has modified the Serbian adage [dating back to enslavement under the Turks] which from now shall stand as: "The judge accuses you; the judge defends you; the judge convicts you."
This, however, is not the only reference by Bush to the tenets of totalitarianism. In his historic speech before Congress, he warned every country in the world that the time has come to make an inescapable choice: "Either they are with us or they are with the terrorists". Informed persons will immediately associate this with the simplistic division of the world in prehistoric mythology into black and white, good and evil, angels and devils, friends and enemies.
According to this interpretation of the world, one's own group, the embodiment of all that is worthy and good, demands absolute identification that neglects the existence of internal differences, while the opposing group is the incarnation of all the evil in the world and thus deserves first excommunication to be followed by complete obliteration. That is exactly how George Bush is thinks when he no longer permits neutrality because, as he has already warned: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.
The third totalitarian characteristic of Bush's speech is the enormous disproportionality between the committed act and the threatened punishment, as well as the statement that no distinctions will be made between the guilty and the innocent. When our army and police responded to unprovoked attacks by Arbanas [Albanian] terrorists in the Presevo Valley [in the south of Serbia], foreign factors, including the American government, constantly warned our armed forces that their response must be proportionate to the attack and that innocent people must not be killed, especially when terrorists are shooting from houses, hiding behind women and the frail.
This proportionality, however, is not binding for the American government. Instead of individualizing guilt and the guilty as he has been persistently urging others to do, George Bush has announced a total war using all available means to include spectacular attacks and constant bombardment until the enemy has no shelter and no strength remaining. Even more important, no reliable guarantees whatsoever have been put forward that innocent people will not also die during this process of implementing justice.
The criteria used by Bush in qualifying certain armed groups as terrorists also provoke deep skepticism. While the Americans themselves were arming and training Osama bin Laden and the Taliban for battle against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, the Taliban were "liberators" and "patriots". When armed Chechens attack the Russian Army in Chechnya and hold every abducted foreigner as a hostage, they are nonetheless a subjugated ethnic minority that is legitimately fighting for its national rights. When bin Laden's terrorist network becomes active in the region of Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo and Metohija, then this is brotherly assistance to imperiled Muslims, who are right in refusing to live in states with a Christian majority. When, on the other hand, the same terrorist network hijacks American airplanes and kills thousands of people in New York and Washington, then this is a heinous crime against whose perpetrators any and all means may be used.
That is how we arrive at the American concept of response to terrorist attacks: total war without any previously established restrictions is allowable only when it is waged by the Americans.
In this respect President Kostunica has been perfectly clear. The federal state not only exists but he will defend it using all constitutional means. That is why under no circumstances could he accept the demand of Milo Djukanovic that talks on reorganization of the joint state take place without the presence of Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragisa Pesic because this would imply that the most important federal institution is no longer legitimate.
Djukanovic and his envoys Svetozar Marovic and Igor Luksic allegedly are still in favor of dialogue but only between representatives of Serbia and Montenegro, as if the federal state no longer existed. They reluctantly accept the participation of Kostunica, too, but not in the capacity of the representative of the federal state, which is in fact his job, but as a "completely legitimate representative of the citizens of Serbia". What is more, they not only make the claim that the federal state no longer exists but also claim that this "new reality" is also acknowledged by Djindjic who says "that the Federal Government is a duplication and that he doesn't need it".
Djindjic and his buddies in the Democratic Opposition of Serbia appear to believe it is more important to humiliate and denounce Kostunica than to defend the federal state. Hence the inexperienced Goran Vesic daringly announced that "the FRY president does not have the constitutional or legislative authority to conduct negotiations regarding the future of Yugoslavia" and Vladan Batic immediately scurried to Podgorica to announce in that very place that talks are possible even without Prime Minister Pesic.
Even though, of course, we still cannot conclude that Djindjic himself is against the further existence of the federal state, based on his actions it appears that he is increasingly succumbing to the temptation to say to Kostunica what Yeltsin formerly said to Gorbachov: "Respected President, the state of which you were formerly the president no longer exists." Aside from a close business relationship, this is the personal motive that may inspire him to work with Djukanovic on the destruction of the federal state.
The differences, however, are in the end goals that guide them. Djindjic has no real reason to oppose the federal state and if he were by some chance to become the federal president or prime minister, he would even be a centralist, since he has no patience for the division of power and responsibility. However, since his more respected and more popular rival happens to be federal president, he has figured out that the easiest way of getting rid of him is by weakening and perhaps even destroying the state of which Kostunica is currently the president.
Djukanovic has an even more perfidious goal. Since he is unsure that he will win a convincing majority in a referendum on the secession of Montenegro and since he cannot contradict himself by engaging in serious negotiations on the reorganization and ultimately on the survival of the federal state, his main goal is to find someone in power in Serbia who will declare in his stead that the federal state no longer exists. That is the key statement that Djukanovic would like to put in Djindjic's mouth.
Even though they have not yet reached the same consensus in state affairs that they otherwise share in matters of business in this debate on who can participate and who need not in this dialogue on the future of the joint state, Djindjic and Djukanovic nevertheless have a common goal: to shift the blame for the destruction of the joint state onto the person who is defending it.
Just as we were getting curious as to how the governments in Serbia and Montenegro would respond, unexpected news arrived from Podgorica that retired General-Colonel Pavle Strugar "on his own initiative has advised appropriate state organs in Montenegro that he is prepared to go voluntarily to The Hague with the intention of proving his innocence". Everyone will immediately ask why he did this since it is common knowledge that in The Hague, at least as far as indicted Serbs are concerned, no one is and no one can be innocent.
Of course, it is not excluded that General Strugar, the only one of the accused who lives in Montenegro, wants to make things easier for his Milo Djukanovic and his right-hand men by refusing to allow them to be stigmatized with the shame of extraditing their own citizens and soldiers to The Hague and that is why he is glad to turn himself in. It is more likely, however, that General Strugar still believes that there must be a causal relationship between his actions and the produced forbidden consequences that makes guilt strictly individual; hence, since he personally did nothing during the military campaign against Dubrovnik, he can hardly be guilty or responsible. It is not excluded that this is precisely what the Montenegrin leaders are whispering in his ear or the ear of one of the attorneys who can't wait to turn him, as one of the accused, into a golden hen.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that the Hague tribunal indicts and punishes aborigines from the Balkans not only for what they personally have done but also for what others have done which, according to the principle of command responsibility, can also be transferred to those who were their commanding officers. Thus, for example, Momcilo Krajisnik and Biljana Plavsic, even though they were civilians during the entire war, have been indicted for all crimes allegedly committed by the Republic of Srpska military and police forces on the territory of Bosnia-Hercegovina from May 1992 to the end of 1995.
Therefore the inexorable Hague syllogism from which their "guilt" follows goes like this: From May 1992 to the end of 1995 Republika Srpska military and police forces committed the following crimes (a long list of crimes and their description follows). The state, military and political leadership of the Republic of Srpska is responsible for these crimes. Momcilo Krajisnik and Biljana Plavsic were members of the highest state and political leadership of the Republic of Srpska. Ergo, they are guilty.
However, this process of deduction and transfer of guilt in accordance with the principle of command responsibility is valid only for Balkan aborigines but not for the civilized Americans and Western Europeans. According to a report by Amnesty International, the renowned non-governmental organization based in London, the air force of the Atlantic Pact [NATO] committed serious war crimes during its aggression against Yugoslavia, including the targeting of a passenger train on a bridge in Grdelica on 12 April 1999, the destruction of the Radio-Television Serbia building on 23 April and the attack on Surdelica on 31 May of that year.
In addition to their immediate executors, according to the principle of command responsibility, also responsible for these serious crimes are their commanders: Bill Clinton, the supreme commander of the American armed forces; American General Wesley Clark, the commander of the Atlantic Pact; and so on. In the middle of the year 2000, however, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, published a report in which the leader of the Atlantic Pact was absolved of all responsibility without an investigation.
Keeping all this in mind, our advice to General Strugar is as follows: Before he decides whether or not to go to The Hague, he needs to determine whether he is a Serb, a Montenegrin or an American. If he is an American, he is free to go because it is highly probable that he will not be tried. If, however, he is a Balkan savage, he must do everything in his power to avoid The Hague because otherwise he will never get out of prison alive.