Chapter 5: The Hijacking and Recovery of Memory
Wartime
leaders, who know that exposing the murders means the loss of their
own legitimacy and discrediting of the myth, harass and denounce
the Cassandras who cry out for justice and historical acountability.
The effort to give a name to the victims and killers begins a collective
act of repentance, a national catharsis. The process, as seen in
Sounth Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, is the only
escape. And while justice is not always done -in South Africa the
full admission of crimes saw killers granted an amnesty- dignity,
identity, and most important, memory are returned. This, for many
families, is enough.
(Hedges, War Is a Force p.130) |
International Criminal Court in the Hague
The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is based on a treaty, joined by 106 countries. The ICC is a court of last resort. It will not act if a case is investigated or prosecuted by a national judicial system unless the national proceedings are not genuine, for example if formal proceedings were undertaken solely to shield a person from criminal responsibility. In addition, the ICC only tries those accused of the gravest crimes.
In all of its activities, the ICC observes the highest standards of fairness and due process. The jurisdiction and functioning of the ICC are governed by the Rome Statute.
Nuremberg Trials
No
trial provides a better basis for understanding the nature and causes of
evil than do the Nuremberg trials from 1945 to 1949. Those who come to
the trials expecting to find sadistic monsters are generally disappointed.
What is shocking about Nuremberg is the ordinariness of the defendants:
men who may be good fathers, kind to animals, even unassuming--yet who
committed unspeakable crimes. Years later, reporting on the trial of Adolf
Eichmann, Hannah Arendt wrote of "the banality of evil." Like
Eichmann, most Nuremberg defendants never aspired to be villains. Rather,
they over-identified with an ideological cause and suffered from a lack
of imagination or empathy: they couldn't fully appreciate the human consequences
of their career-motivated decisions. (Univ. Missouri-Kansas Law)
- Donovan
Nuremberg Trials Collection (Cornell Law) 2008.
The Donovan Nuremberg Trials collection consists of nearly 150 bound volumes of Nuremberg trial transcripts and documents from the personal archives of General William J. Donovan (1883-1959). - Famous World Trials: Nuremberg (Univ. Missouri-Kansas Law).
- Nuremberg Trials (Library of Congress) 2008.
- Nuremberg Trials (PBS
American Experience) 2006.
One journalist described it as a chance "to see justice catch up with evil." On November 20, 1945, the twenty-two surviving representatives of the Nazi elite stood before an international military tribunal at the Palace of Justice in Nuremberg, Germany; they were charged with the systematic murder of millions of people.
The ensuing trial pitted U.S. chief prosecutor and Supreme Court judge Robert Jackson against Hermann Göring, the former head of the Nazi air force, whom Adolf Hitler had once named to be his successor. Jackson hoped that the trial would make a statement that crimes against humanity would never again go unpunished. Proving the guilt of the defendants, however, was more difficult than Jackson anticipated. This American Experience production draws upon rare archival material and eyewitness accounts to recreate the dramatic tribunal that defines trial procedure for state criminals to this day. - Nuremberg Trials (Univ. Missouri-Kansas Law) 2000.
- Nuremberg
Trials Project (Harvard Law) 2003.
The Harvard Law School Library has approximately one million pages of documents relating to the trial of military and political leaders of Nazi Germany before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and to the twelve trials of other accused war criminals before the United States Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT). - Nuremberg Trial Photos (Florida Center for Instructional Technology) 2008.
- Nuremberg Trials: The Defendents and Verdicts (Middle Tennesee State University) 1996.
- November 20, 1945: Nuremberg Trials Begin (HistoryPlace) 1997.
- A Look Back at Nuremberg (CourtTV) 1999.
War Crimes: The Balkans Conflict
Follow the latest Developments at the International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yogoslavia (United Nations)
http://www.un.org/icty/latest-e/index.htm
The website includes video and audio feeds from the broadcasts of the three
courtrooms along with the latest press releases and press advisories.
Antecedents on the conflict from the "Crimes of War Project"
http://www.crimesofwar.org/archive/archive-europe.html
The Crimes of War Project is a collaboration of journalists, lawyers and
scholars dedicated to raising public awareness of the laws of war and their
application to situations of conflict. The goal is to promote understanding
of international humanitarian law among journalists, policymakers, and
the general public, in the belief that a wider knowledge of the legal framework
governing armed conflict will lead to greater pressure to prevent breaches
of the law, and to punish those who commit them.
Slobodan
Milosevic Case Information
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Indicted for genocide; complicity in genocide; deportation; murder;
persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds; inhumane acts/forcible
transfer; extermination; imprisonment; torture; wilful killing; unlawful
confinement; wilfully causing great suffering; unlawful deportation or
transfer; extensive destruction and appropriation of
property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and
wantonly; cruel treatment; plunder of public or private property; attacks on
civilians; destruction or wilful damage done to historic monuments and institutions
dedicated to education or
religion; unlawful attacks on civilian objects.
Deceased on March 11, 2006
Proceedings terminated on March 14, 2006
Latest
News: Radovan Karadzic Arrested in Belgrade
http://www.crimesofwar.org/onnews/news-karadzic.html
By Anthony Dworkin (July 22, 2008)
Radovan Karadzic, political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the war
in Bosnia and one of the two most wanted war crimes suspects in Europe,
has been arrested in Serbia and is likely to be transferred to the Yugoslav
war crimes tribunal in The Hague within days.
Radovan Karadzic Case: General Information view HTML - Download PDF
Understanding the role of the ICTY bringing justice to the former
Yugoslavia
http://www.un.org/icty/glance-e/index.htm
By holding individuals accountable regardless of their position, the ICTY's
work has dismantled the tradition of impunity for war crimes and other
serious violations of international law, particularly by individuals who
held the most senior positions, but also by others who committed especially
grave crimes