International Justice in Rwanda and the Balkans: Virtual Trials and the Struggle for State Cooperation

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Cambridge University Press, Mar 3, 2008 - Political Science
Today's international war crimes tribunals lack police powers, and therefore must prod and persuade defiant states to co-operate in the arrest and prosecution of their own political and military leaders. Victor Peskin's comparative study traces the development of the capacity to build the political authority necessary to exact compliance from states implicated in war crimes and genocide in the cases of the International War Crimes Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Drawing on 300 in-depth interviews with tribunal officials, Balkan and Rwandan politicians, and Western diplomats, Peskin uncovers the politicized, protracted, and largely behind-the-scenes tribunal-state struggle over co-operation.

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Contents

International War Crimes Tribunals and the Politics of State
3
Slobodan Miloˇsevic and the Politics of State Cooperation
29
International Justice and Serbias Troubled Democratic
61
Franjo Tudman and the Politics of International Justice
92
The Politics of State Cooperation in Croatias Democratic Era
119
The Struggle to Create the International Criminal Tribunal
151
Trials of Cooperation and the Battles for Karamira
170
Investigating Rwandan Patriotic Front Atrocities and
186
The Prosecutor v Kagame
207
The Present and Future of International Criminal Justice
235
Bibliography 259
263
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Page 26 - The evidence tendered by the prosecutor describes scenes of unimaginable savagery: thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers' eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson.
Page 231 - All differences between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation or application of this Agreement shall be settled by negotiation between them without recourse to any outside jurisdiction. Except where express provision is made to the contrary in this Agreement, differences which cannot be settled by direct negotiation shall be referred to the North Atlantic Council.
Page 14 - The fact of the matter is that we know that crimes against humanity have occurred, and we know when and where they occurred. We know, moreover, which forces committed those crimes, and under whose command they operated. And we know, finally, who the political leaders are to whom those military commanders were — and still are — responsible...
Page 252 - He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Page ii - Bob, Clifford (2005) The Marketing of Rebellion: Insurgents, Media, and International Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Page 52 - that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is ... cooperating with the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia including access for investigators, the provision of documents, and the surrender and transfer of indictees or assistance in their apprehension.
Page 23 - ... United States and its European allies in a "new" Europe be like? And what role would Russia assume after the Cold War?65 By now, Tony Lake felt, the administration's constant shifting response on Bosnia was hurting Clinton's foreign policy as a whole. In a memo Lake recalled, "The administration's weak, muddle-through strategy in Bosnia was becoming a cancer on Clinton's entire foreign policy — spreading and eating away at its credibility.
Page 79 - Marcus Tanner, Croatia: A Nation Forged In War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); and Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: TV Books, 1995).
Page 162 - Tribunal - an institution whose primary purpose is to ensure that justice is done - must not place its imprimatur on such violations. To allow the Appellant to be tried on the charges for which he was belatedly indicted would be a travesty of justice. Nothing less than the integrity of the Tribunal is at stake in this case. Loss of public confidence in the Tribunal, as a court valuing human rights of all...
Page 33 - ... November, the Bosnian Serbs began to resist on almost every nonmilitary issue, while remaining careful to avoid provoking IFOR. It was almost as if they had an implicit understanding with the IFOR command: we will not attack your forces if you leave us alone to pursue an ethnically divided country. Of all the things necessary to achieve our goals in Bosnia, the most important was still the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.

About the author (2008)

Victor Peskin received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently an Assistant Professor in The School of Global Studies at Arizona State University. His scholarly and teaching interests lie at the intersection of international relations, comparative politics, and human rights. His research examines the politics of the contemporary international criminal tribunals and their contentious relationship with states implicated in war crimes and genocide. His research has been funded by the United States Institute of Peace and the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. He has published articles in Europe-Asia Studies, Legal Affairs, International Peacekeeping, the Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of International Criminal Justice.

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