Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Good news on the justice front

Radovan Karadzic, one of two principal criminals from the Bosnian War of the 1990's, was arrested by Serbian police and will be shipped (as freight, we hope) to the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. He deserves to be presumed innocent, like any defendant, but I fear that I cannot suspend disbelief that far.

My cynicism also leads me to doubt that Karadzic's capture represents a real change in attitude in Serbia. But on that, I may be wrong; I speak with no real knowledge of the psyche of that country if, indeed, a nation may be said to have a collective psyche. (Is the United States the rogue, criminal country we have been for the past eight years, or something different and better? I know my answer to that one.)

And speaking of the US, the military judge at the show trial of Salim Hamdan, the first of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to face a military tribunal, threw out evidence obtained while Hamdan was a prisoner in Afghanistan. The material was gathered by coercive interrogation (i.e., the third degree), or maybe you call it torture. (As described in the NYT, the methods used are probably more police brutality than torture, if such a fine distinction may be made.)

OK, that's all the good news. The same judge also ruled that Guantanamo detainees lack a broad right against self-incrimination. Given what the judge threw out, the prosecution will have to rely on statements that Hamdan allegedly made at Guantanamo where, believe me, he got no Miranda warning. After all, we couldn't expect that the guy might actually be acquitted, right?

1 comment:

Leanderthal, Lighthouse Keeper said...

I posted this morning on the New York Times editorial and Bob Herbert's column having to do with human rights, pointing out that China can simply point to the US over the past eight years as their competitor in who can do a better job of denying human rights. Bush/Cheney/Addington,Yoo and others should also be air-freighted to the Hague.