The Devil's Garden: A War Crimes Investigator's Story

Epilogue: The Hague Crucible

171 EPILOGUE z The Hague Crucible O n March 11, 2006, on a quiet Saturday morning, Slobodan Milošević was found dead. He was alone in his locked cell in Scheveningen , the same gloomy prison where my journey to The Hague had begun some eight years earlier. Speculation began at once and included talk that Milošević had been murdered by poison. In fact, the tribunal’s inquiry into his death revealed that nonprescribed medications at times had been found in Milošević’s blood, most recently one month prior to his demise. Those drugs had been smuggled into the UN detention center and had the power to annihilate the desired effects of his prescribed heart medications . Conspiracy theories of this sort have arisen around the world and throughout history—after the deaths of Rudolph Hess, Jack Ruby, and Pope John Paul I, for example. Why should the death of Slobodan Milošević have been any different? But the speculation was baseless, the coroner said. The official cause and manner of death: natural causes from a heart attack. Milošević was sixty-four. Milošević’s death occurred just a few weeks before he was prepared to rest his case. Milošević had been representing himself in his legal defense, although the tribunal also had appointed an amici curiae, a group of three attorneys who were “friends of the court,” to be present and to assist the tribunal with ensuring a fair trial for the accused. The legal proceedings on the charges against Milošević were both a test and a trial. It was a test of the prosecution theory of the joint criminal enterprise . Indeed, Milošević was the first president who stood in the dock 172 / THE DEVIL’S GARDEN before an international criminal tribunal for crimes against humanity alleged to have been committed while he was a sitting head of state. As interesting as the court proceedings were, I have intentionally avoided discussing the trial throughout this book. This is, first and foremost , a war crimes investigator’s story. Nevertheless, with Milošević’s death coming before the end of the trial and without a final judgment from the court, I feel personally and professionally compelled to make a few observations. Based on the investigation and the facts that it produced, I believe there was sufficient evidence to prove Milošević’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Surely this comes as no surprise. What lead investigator would suggest otherwise? But some aspects of the proceedings against Milošević troubled me. From the comfort of my nineteenth-century farmhouse just outside of Pittsburgh, I watched as much of the live proceedings as I could over the Internet. And in the process of writing this book, I sat in my study and read transcript after transcript. I first was taken aback by the number of times that prosecution witnesses barely testified, save for providing their names and confirming information and summaries of their statements, which were read directly into the record. To add to this, when witnesses needed to explain an issue or a question with more than a yes-or-no response, they often were told that details weren’t important. Again, some of the witnesses simply were asked to confirm what was being read into the record. This was direct examination conducted in a way I’d never seen. I realize that the process was streamlined because it was such a lengthy trial. And surely Milošević was stringing the proceedings along. But he was a defendant in a criminal trial, and many of the points he raised were, in my view, legitimate. By no means am I suggesting that Milošević wasn’t criminally responsible for many of the acts for which he was charged, but in my opinion, reading statements and summaries into the record as evidence was not the way to proceed. In addition, the presiding judge often shut down Milošević when he attempted to cross-examine some of the witnesses on extremely relevant issues. When he was allowed to cross-examine, he raised good points and quite often did an excellent job. From my perspective, there was far too much inquisitorial influence in the trial. Epilogue / 173 Many people cheer with their hearts the convictions of men and women who commit heinous crimes, and we are all fortunate that humanity has whittled away the impunity that human rights violators enjoyed...