The Long Arm of Justice

Having lived in Boston for eight years, I was appropriately titillated by the recent capture of Whitey Bulger.  But I was even more titillated by the capture, the week before, of Ratko Mladic, alleged mastermind of much mayhem in the Balkans in the 1990s.  Consider: Whitey was wanted for 19 murders; Ratko was wanted for more than 7,000 murders in Srebrenica alone.  Damn.

In fact, there's been so many headlines like these in recent weeks that even I have overlooked some of them.  In the spirit of Jeff's recent post about The Hague's lack of brand clarity, and for your use during cocktail parties and high-end water cooler debates, I present a cheat sheet on the international criminal courts in The Hague - and which recent headlines go with which:

ICTY 

Full name: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Created by: The United Nations Security Council in 1993 

Purpose: To prosecute war crimes and atrocities committed during the bloody dissolution of Yugoslavia

Best known for: Its most famous defendant, Slobodan Milosevic, died during his trial in 2006 - talk about anticlimactic.

Recent headline: The arrest of Ratko Mladic, who after Milosevic is the most infamous leader from the wars in the Balkans, yet managed to elude capture for the last 15 years.  

ICTR 

Full name: International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Created by: The United Nations Security Council in 1994 

Purpose: To prosecute those most responsible for the Rwandan genocide

Caveat: The ICTR is technically based in Arusha, Tanzania, but its appeals chamber - which it shares with the ICTY - sits in The Hague. 

Recent headline: At the same time as the Mladic arrest, one of the ten remaining ICTR fugitives was also captured (Bernard Munyagishari).  And then in June, the ICTR handed down a major judgment convicting six defendants, including the first woman to be charged with genocide (Pauline Nyiramasuhuko).

ICC

Full name: International Criminal Court

Created by: Treaty.  The ICC is completely separate from the United Nations and currently has 116 members (Tunisia just joined on June 27).  Its treaty took effect in July 2002.

Purpose: The ICC is a permanent court with nearly global jurisdiction.  Current trials involve the use of child soldiers and mass rape committed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.

Key point: These days, this is usually the court the newscasters are talking about when they say some leader is wanted by/being sent to "The Hague."

Recent headline:  After the UN Security Council asked the ICC to look into the whole Libya fiasco, the ICC just last week issued an arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi.

Sierra Leone/SCSL

Full name: The Special Court for Sierra Leone

Created by: Treaty between Sierra Leone and the United Nations

Purpose: To try those responsible for atrocities during Sierra Leone's bloody civil war in the late 1990s

Clarification: Although the SCSL was created after the ICC, the ICC could not prosecute crimes that occurred before 2002.  Also, while the SCSL is based in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, it has conducted its most high-profile case - that of Charles Taylor - in The Hague.

Recent headline: None, but you should be sitting on the edge of your seat.  The Charles Taylor case is over, and the judges in The Hague are preparing their verdict.  Although the President of neighboring Liberia, Taylor was widely thought responsible for instigating the war in Sierra Leone, infamous for its use of child soldiers and disturbing mutilations of civilians. (This was also the case in which Naomi Campbell was called to testify.)  

That Lebanon Court

Full name: Special Tribunal for Lebanon

Created by: Treaty between Lebanon and the United Nations, backed up with a UN Security Council Resolution for good measure

Purpose: To investigate the bombing that killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 other people in February 2004

Recent headline: The Tribunal issued its first indictment last week, a huge development in Lebanon.  Hezbollah claims that the four people named in the indictment (which has not been made public) are all members of its organization and that it will not allow them to be arrested.  This one should be interesting.

So this list omits the international criminal courts sitting in other countries (like the one in Cambodia currently prosecuting what's left of the Khmer Rouge leadership), admirable efforts by national courts to prosecute decades-old crimes (see, for example, Germany and Argentina), and all the other international courts also in The Hague: The International Court of Justice, the Iran-US Claims Tribunal (yes, that's still around), the Permanent Court of Arbitration, etc., etc., yawn, yawn.

But at least there's a good lesson in all of this: it might take three years (Charles Taylor), it might take 15 (Mladic), it might even take 35 (Khmer Rouge) or 65 (Germany's still prosecuting those Nazis) - but justice does catch up.  I just hope for those people suffering now, it catches up sooner rather than later.