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

1. The Hague

5 1 z The Hague I first saw the prison not long after I arrived in The Hague, the international city of peace and justice in the Netherlands. It was September 1998. With the sound of the crashing waves from the North Sea and the tall walls and Gothic architecture, the premises seemed more like a castle than a place for serial rapists, torturers, and mass murderers. I knew it had been used to hold Dutch resistance fighters during World War II. I could imagine the guards removing more than three hundred of the prisoners, including those held in the infamous “Death Cell 601,” and executing them in the nearby dunes. For the Nazis, it was one final crime of war, committed in a place where my job was just beginning . A special wing of the prison, under the command of the UN, now housed war crimes suspects awaiting trial for atrocities committed in Yugoslavia. It was almost dark, and my thoughts about the Germans took me back momentarily to twenty-two years earlier, in East Berlin. I recalled a cold Sunday afternoon walking past the many gray and gloomy buildings that still bore heavy scars from World War II. In the distance I could see the graffiti-covered Berlin Wall, which served not only as a symbol of the thenongoing Cold War but also as the demarcation between where I stood and a place where I didn’t have to fear being arrested or, worse yet, shot. But first I had to get past the Volkspolizei, the Soviet officers, and the East German sentries, both on the ground and in their observation posts, to return to West Berlin, where I was stationed in the U.S. Air Force. Land mines were on either side of the seemingly endless walkway that took me back through Checkpoint Charlie. I was just barely eighteen, and this 6 / THE DEVIL’S GARDEN surreal experience provided a quick lesson, both in history and in life. I never imagined that two decades later I would be back in Europe, this time leading an international investigation of the president of a country for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The next day I reported to my new job at the ICTY. I took the tram from the Carlton Beach hotel in Scheveningen, listening to the mixed voices of Dutch-, French-, and English-speaking passengers along the way. Through the window I could see well-dressed children, many of whom were boys with spiked hair, as well as adults, riding their bicycles. I disembarked in front of the tribunal headquarters and took a short walk into another world. Inside the headquarters building, everyone seemed to have a sense of purpose, of urgency. I was escorted to the investigations wing of the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), where I met senior members of police forces from Italy, South Africa, Belgium, France, Canada, and many other nations. Most were multilingual. They spoke various languages when it suited them; English when it was necessary. In this environment the most serious levels of major-crimes investigation, military intelligence, and juridical operations were combined. There was no other place quite like it. Here the masks were taken off the men who committed crimes that shocked the conscience of humanity. For war, violent crime, and espionage , it is the true endgame—full stop. The countdown for one such war crimes suspect was under way just as I entered the highly secure premises for the first time. Operation Ensue was in full force. The target: Stevan Todorović, a former Bosnian-Serb police chief who had been involved in the brutal rapes and murders of Bosnian-Croats and Bosnian-Muslims. Just days after my arrival at headquarters , Todorović had been outside of Bosnia, beyond the reach of the war crimes tribunal—or so he thought.1 I later learned that British Special Air Service (SAS) operators, armed with sealed indictments issued by the tribunal, had captured Todorović in a log cabin hideout some eighty kilometers over the Bosnian border, just inside of Serbia. Evading and eluding Serb military and security forces, the SAS smuggled Todorović back into Bosnia by way of the River Drina in an inflatable, high-speed rubber boat designed specifically for clandestine military operations such as this. Next, they took him by helicopter to Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia, where he was turned over The Hague / 7 to war crimes...