The Tribunal

Acknowledgements

Many people helped make this, my first book, possible.

Jeanne and Jennifer Robinson had to live with me while I wrote it, and suffer through my endless readings and revisions.

Bruce Henderson, a fabulous author, helped turn my amateur writing style into something more acceptable. My friend and agent, Shana Keating, a great lawyer in her own right, offered me many useful suggestions and unfailing optimism.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Christian Chartier, Chief of Public Information Services, was most gracious with his time and arranged a tour of some parts of the Tribunal that even defence lawyers don’t get to see. Jan Maarten Terwiel, the Director of Education of the Scheveningen prison complex, where the Tribunal keeps its inmates, gave me a wonderful tour and showed me his own, impressive book.

Judge Ewald Behrschmidt of the Court of Nuremburg, Germany, graciously gave me a bird’s-eye perspective of the Nuremberg trials and let me sit in the very chairs occupied by those who defended at Nuremberg almost 50 years ago.

My good friend and colleague Tomislav Visnjic of Belgrade taught me what it was like to be a defence lawyer at the Tribunal, and gave me the opportunity to try it out myself.

To all of these people, I will be forever grateful.

The Security Council, expressing once again its grave alarm at continuing reports of widespread and flagrant violations of international humanitarian law occurring within the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and especially in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, including reports of mass killings, massive, organized and systematic detention and rape of women, and the continuance of the practice of “ethnic cleansing”, including for the acquisition and the holding of territory,…decides hereby to establish an international tribunal for the sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

– United Nations Resolution 827 (1993)

Since its inception, the Tribunal has become a fully operational legal institution rendering judgements and setting important precedents of international criminal and humanitarian law. Many legal issues now adjudicated by the Tribunal have never actually been adjudicated or have lain dormant since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials.

The Rules of Procedure and Evidence guarantee that Tribunal proceedings adhere to internationally recognised principles of a fair trial.

– International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia document (2001)