But it is impossible for the world not to associate the conviction with del Ponte and the success of the prosecution's case with the feminisation of The Hague tribunal.Ĭarla del Ponte is third in a line of formidable women at The Hague - the others were the judge in the first case who became its president, Gabrielle Kirk MacDonald, a black civil rights judge from Texas and judge Louise Arbour of Canada, whom del Ponte replaced in September 1999.ĭel Ponte was the first career prosecutor to step into the prosecutor's shoes. The investigation was made by a tenacious American female attorney, Nancy Patterson, and the verdict delivered by a female judge, Florence Mumba of Zambia. The then UN envoy David Owen, when pressed in Sarajevo to draft a response, said: 'It's very difficult to talk to the Serbs about this kind of thing.' Others seemed to find it hard to deal with. But the central and sole conviction for mass rape in Foca ended once and for all grotesque doubts that some had sought to cast over the veracity of the accounts of women raped in Bosnia, which first surfaced in 1992. Systematic rape was also a component part in the conviction for genocide of Jean-Paul Akayesu, a Hutu leader in the Rwanda genocide, at the Arusha court last year. The Foca verdict came on the slipstream of two civil suits against an absentee Radovan Kadadzic filed through New York by women who had been raped at the Omarska concentration camp, in which the juries asked the judge for permission to award up to 10 times the maximum damages allowed. If The Hague was conceived as proceeding in the traditions of Nuremberg, this was a crime of which the male world of those trials had not even attempted to convict the Nazis, for all the copious evidence available. Here was not only justice being done, but justice being played in a new, female key painted in new, female colours that depicted rape as a tool of war and crime against humanity. Three Bosnian Serbs from Foca were convicted in the first ever war crimes trial dealing exclusively with sexual offences - charges that seared the imagination of even the most hardened of lawyers or war reporters the systematic mass rape and torture of captive women and young girls. The conviction was secured last week of its most senior defendant, the Bosnian Croat political commander Dario Kordic, for directing a series of horrific massacres of Muslims along the Lasva valley, and his aide-de-camp.īut far more significant, last month came a piece of history in our lifetime. Suddenly, the court has become a judicial bowling alley, defendants going down like skittles. The diabolical triad of prize indictees - Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic - remain at liberty.īut some epic events have occurred at The Hague of late, which bear the unmistakable hallmark of Carla del Ponte. It took nearly two years to hear the first case and the defendant in the first genocide trial (in which, declaring an interest, I testified for the prosecution) died in custody of a massive heart attack. The tribunal established during the maelstrom of the Bosnian war in 1994 was at first dismissed as an unarmed hunter unlikely to bag any big game. It does not store any personal data.Carla del Ponte is currently chief prosecutor for two historic institutions that have become metaphors for our era - whether they stand or fall: the international tribunals on war crimes established at The Hague - trying those accused of crimes committed in former Yugoslavia - and at Arusha, trying defendants from the Rwandan genocide. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. ![]() The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". ![]() ![]() The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". ![]() These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |