War Crimes

UNITED NATIONS -- The Security Council, launching the first international judgment of war crimes since the aftermath of World War II, voted unanimously yesterday to establish a tribunal to prosecute atrocities committed in the Balkans.Spurred by mounting evidence of mass killing, forced deportations, concentration camps and mass rapes, the council said reports of widespread violation of international law threatened international security."There is an echo in this chamber today; the Nuremberg principles have been reaffirmed," U.S. envoy Madeleine Albright said in voting for the resolution.

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is oiling up legal machinery that hasn't been used since World War II as another weapon in the war on terrorism: special military tribunals to try selected terrorist suspects. Defense Department lawyers are putting finishing touches on guidelines for prosecuting suspected terrorists and al-Qaida fighters for war-crimes violations, said Maj. Ted Wadsworth, a Pentagon spokesman. By the end of the year, the guidelines may be ready, including a definition of war-crimes offenses.

GRASTICA, Kosovo -- With cold weather descending on the Balkans, war-crimes investigators have ended their first season of work on the grim task of unearthing Kosovo's dead. The exhumation at the old mill was one of the last of the year.Months earlier, a dozen men had been buried by a stream in unmarked shallow holes here, a mile from the nearest paved road, and covered with a foot of soil. Now, using shovels and trowels, a team of war-crimes investigators was digging them out.The graves had been found in a quiet, secluded valley in the hills of eastern Kosovo.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government identified nine Yugoslav commanders yesterday who could be charged with war crimes for spearheading the offensive in Kosovo, while NATO missiles once again struck Belgrade, targeting a former army headquarters.Serbian TV said the missiles struck at the facility located on a main street, near the headquarters of the Serbian government. On Saturday, NATO missiles hit the Serbian and Yugoslav Interior Ministry buildings, which were engulfed in flames."This is not a military facility.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- They were defiant and dismissive, unbowed and yet a little unsettled.Yesterday, Yugoslavia's politicians and citizens -- those who knew about it -- sought to come to terms with war crimes indictments issued against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four of his top associates.Never before had one country been forced to confront the fact that its sitting president was charged with crimes against humanity by an international tribunal.This day was seemingly eight years in the making, as Milosevic stood at the center of ethnic conflicts that caused deaths, damage and the virtual destruction of Yugoslavia.

WASHINGTON -- Investigators at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, have concluded that the Croatian army carried out summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and "ethnic cleansing" during a 1995 assault that was a turning point in the Balkan wars, according to tribunal documents."

THIS IS a picture of ethnic cleansing in progress.The red-circled objects are Serbian armored vehicles, surrounding the Kosovo Albanian village of Glodane.The elongated gray smudge in the lower-right area of the shot is a crowd of people -- the population of the village, ousted from their homes and herded into a field by Serbian troops. You can also make out a flow of civilian vehicles, presumably full of deportees, proceeding from the field south on the road to Albania.Striking imagesIt's breathtaking to contemplate these images, probably taken by an American U-2 spy plane over Kosovo at the height of the Serbian rampage through the province.

PARIS -- Investigators of the international tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, are preparing to enter Kosovo with the multinational peacekeeping force to ensure that they can gather the freshest possible evidence of war crimes, tribunal and Western officials say.The details of how they will travel and where they will go are still being worked out, the officials said. But Louise Arbour, the chief prosecutor of the tribunal, has received promises from NATO headquarters that its forces will provide logistical support, such as providing security and clearing mines at sites where investigators need to work.

WASHINGTON -- Despite the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic and four others, the United States and its Western allies made no change yesterday in their strategy of pushing for a diplomatic settlement with the Yugoslav president, even while expanding NATO's 2-month-old bombing campaign.A senior American envoy continued yesterday to deal with Milosevic through a Russian intermediary, as pressure grew on the West to broker an end to the Kosovo conflict and to mount a peacekeeping operation before the onset of the Balkan winter four months from now."

WASHINGTON -- The deal that Slobodan Milosevic reached with European and Russian envoys yesterday omits any mention of his indictment for war crimes, effectively keeping him safe from international prosecutors for as long as he remains the No. 1 power in Yugoslavia."

The U.S. government got a guilty verdict yesterday in its prosecution of Osama bin Laden's driver in the first war crimes trial since World War II. But it's a hollow victory because the military tribunal system, as shaped by the Bush administration, remains a flawed instrument of the war on terror that contravenes the principles of American justice. A jury of six military officers convicted Salim Hamdan of "material support" for terrorism, the lesser of the two charges against him but one broad enough to easily ensnare a small-time player such as the Yemeni.

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba - A military jury convicted Osama bin Laden's driver yesterday of providing material support to terrorism but acquitted him of the more serious charge of conspiracy. Salim Hamdan quietly collapsed in tears at the defense table, where he had sat through three weeks of government testimony about his involvement with al-Qaida, mostly gleaned from at least 40 interrogations by U.S. federal agents. The Navy captain presiding over the six-person jury slowly read out the verdict on each of 10 separate counts, announcing first that the 38-year-old Yemeni with a fourth-grade education was not guilty on both counts of conspiracy.

Some crimes horrify because of their brutality, others because of the sheer number of their victims. The alleged crimes of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader accused of orchestrating Europe's worst massacre since World War II, were a mad stew of cruelty and mass murder that made the term "ethnic cleansing" synonymous with evil. This week, after a decade-long manhunt, Serbian police finally arrested Mr. Karadzic on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. His capture, though long delayed, should send a message to tyrants everywhere: You can run, you can hide, but sooner or later you will be found and called to account for your despicable actions.

WASHINGTON - In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay began to mount, FBI agents at the base created a "war crimes file" to document accusations against American military personnel but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report disclosed yesterday. The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency.

American soldiers and Marines in Iraq are convicted of the homicides of noncombatants but sentenced to no confinement. No officer is held accountable for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. These are just two disturbing military legal headlines. Why are court-martial convictions seemingly hard to come by? The homicides of 24 Haditha civilians, including women and children, for example, resulted in court-martial charges against eight Marines, including four officers. Almost two years later, however, charges have been dropped against two of the four alleged shooters and one of the four officers, Capt.

EL FASHER, Sudan -- For a man accused of masterminding massacres, Ahmad Harun seems quite comfortable in the place he is suspected of helping to destroy. He strolls around the grassy compound belonging to the local governor in Sudan's deeply troubled Darfur region, embracing Arab tribal leaders, soldiers and officials who have come to hear the president. Harun, 42, was in charge of the region's security during the height of the attacks on farm villages that sent millions fleeing their homes in 2003 and 2004.

UNITED NATIONS -- A high-level U.N. mission to Darfur said yesterday that the Sudanese government had orchestrated human rights crimes against its own people and urged that leaders of Sudan's government and militias be charged with war crimes. But Khartoum is blocking United Nations attempts to stem the violence, organizing opposition to the mission's report and stepping back from its agreement to accept a joint U.N.-African peacekeeping force in the region. Sudan's government "has manifestly failed to protect the population of Darfur from large-scale international crimes, and has itself orchestrated and participated in these crimes," according to a report commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

WASHINGTON -- A small group of Marylanders staged an antiwar protest in the Capitol Hill office of Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski yesterday to demand that she stop voting to fund the war in Iraq. Mikulski, who voted against giving President Bush authority to use military force in Iraq in 2002 but has voted subsequently to approve spending on the war, did not meet with the protesters. Through an aide, the Maryland Democrat declined to comment on the protest. "We know that Senator Mikulski is against the war, but she has voted to fund it," said Susan Crane, a peace activist from Baltimore.

My smart and ambitious Serbian language teacher in Belgrade last summer spoke for an entire generation of young people in the former Yugoslavia when she unleashed a bitter tirade on the difficulties of obtaining a visa to travel abroad, even to nearby Austria or Italy. "I feel like I'm in a prison," Marija complained, "and I don't even know who to blame!" Not all of Marija's friends are so unsure. Many, she told me, feel the European Union is blackmailing Serbs by requiring their government to arrest Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic - indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal of the Former Yugoslavia on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity - before restarting its "stabilization and association agreement" with Belgrade.

Sept. 30 1946 An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes.