Milosevic has not been exonerated

Re: Media that vilified Milosevic are silent on his exoneration, Aug. 16

Most western media have not reported that the International Court at The Hague (ICTY) has fully exonerated Slobodan Milosevic of the many crimes that he was accused of committing during the war in Bosnia because no such finding has been made by the ICTY.

When the apologists for Milosevic such as Robert Sibley and James Bissett quote passages from the ICTY finding of guilt against Radovan Karadzic to prove Milosevic had no hand in the genocide, they conveniently ignore the ICTY’s own response to their claims:

“The Trial Chamber seized of the Karadzic case found, at paragraph 3460, page 1303, of the Trial Judgement, that ‘there was not sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milosevic agreed with the common plan.’ The Trial Chamber found earlier in the same paragraph that ‘Milosevic provided assistance in the form of personnel, provisions and arms to Bosnian Serbs during the conflict.’

“The Trial Chamber did not make any determination of guilt in respect of Mr. Milosevic in its verdict against Mr. Karadzic. Indeed, Mr. Milosevic was not charged or accused in the Karadzic case. The fact that a person is, or is not, found to be part of a joint criminal enterprise in a case in which he is not charged has no impact on the status of his own case or his own criminal responsibility.

“The trial against Mr. Karadzic was against him only and therefore has no impact on the separate case against Slobodan Milosevic.”

I was Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000 and knew Milosevic first-hand. I found him to be a ruthless autocrat who would stop at nothing to retain personal control over the Serbian state. He presided over a kleptocracy of gigantic proportions that exploited the resources of a potentially rich country for his own gain while reducing the people he claimed to represent to dire poverty.

Innocent of war crimes? I don’t think so, but the case will never be tried be cause he died in custody. Raphael Girard, Ottawa