People I don't feel bad for: Ratko Mladic

[da_widget]

Mladic May Seek to Use Poor Health to Avoid The Hague

BELGRADE, Serbia - Life on the run has not been kind to Ratko Mladic, a fugitive in his own land from war crimes charges. His mouth droops sideways and his skin is bluish and mottled red, the pallor of poor hygiene, bad nutrition and self-imposed prison, according to his longtime friend and

Comments

[nerdanel]

Yep: old and sick is not a defense to genocide.

Quick comment on the "International Criminal Court," because I've seen this misstated in a few places: Mladic is not being tried before the ICC, located in the Hague. He will instead face trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a wholly separate court that was established by the UN Security Council and is located in the Hague. So, if you tag this, please tag it under ICTY, not ICC.

(The ICC does not have jurisdiction over Mladic. It was established via a treaty - the Rome Statute, drafted in 1998, and it only has jurisdiction over crimes committed after its effective date in 2002. The Srebrenica massacre long-predated the ICC.)

[da_widget]

Thank you for correcting me. I'm rather embarrassed as I was just reading about this the other day. Regardless, ONTD_P does not have tags for either and should add both.

[nerdanel]

Oh, please don't feel embarrassed! This is a common mistake. All three tribunals are in the Hague, and all three start with "IC," so they're easy to mix up.

If it makes you feel any better, the New York Times has, within the past two days, busily tried to send Mladic to the ICC and, worse yet, to the ICJ (which has no jurisdiction over either individuals or crimes). It's rather extraordinary to me that none of their proofreaders seem to know the difference and that no one has written to correct them, or they haven't acted on it. But there you have it - everyone's confused.

[nerdanel]

Er, I copied and pasted a sentence, so now it doesn't make sense. When I said, "All three tribunals are in the Hague," I was referring to the ICC, ICJ, and ICTY. You didn't mention the ICJ, but the NYT did, as I mention in the next paragraph.

[da_widget]

I was going to say... it's one thing to mix it up with the ICC (easy mistake since it deals with the broader issues of the ICTY), but the ICJ doesn't have anything to do with war crimes, genocide, etc. Go NYT...

Abbreviations galore!