President of International War Crimes Tribunal May Have Worked
to Shield Israelis From Prosecution
By Alison Weir
The New York Times reports that an Israeli diplomat turned U.S. citizen – and now president of the war crimes tribunal at the Hague – has been pressuring the court to acquit officials accused of war crimes.
By Alison Weir
The New York Times reports that an Israeli diplomat turned U.S. citizen – and now president of the war crimes tribunal at the Hague – has been pressuring the court to acquit officials accused of war crimes.
The
Times says that the Israeli-American judge, Theodor
Meron, “... has led a push for raising the bar for
conviction in such cases, prosecutors say, to the point
where a conviction has become nearly impossible.”
Some
analysts feel that Meron’s motivation may be to protect
Israeli political and military leaders from prosecutions
that could place them in legal jeopardy.
International attorney and analyst John Whitbeck comments
that both Israel and the United States are “world leaders in
the commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and
crimes against peace,” and that their officials “would
prefer to see the bar for criminal convictions raised to a
level which offers them continued impunity.”
However, Whitbeck points out that the risk to American
leaders is relatively insignificant, since the U.S.
government would be able to use its UN Security Council veto
to protect its leaders.
The
situation for Israeli officials, on the other hand, is quite
different. According to Whitbeck: “The threat of
accountability is potentially imminent and urgent for Israel
and Israelis.”
Before
immigrating to the U.S.,
Meron was a member of the Israeli Foreign Service and
served as Israeli Ambassador to Canada and to the United
Nations in Geneva. He also served as Legal Counsel to the
Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In
1967 Meron wrote a secret
memorandum of law to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol
stating that creating Israeli settlements on occupied
territory would be a violation of the Fourth Geneva
Convention, contrary to international law and, hence, a war
crime.
The
Israeli government ignored this memo (which neither the
government nor Meron made public), and have been creating
illegal settlements ever since. In January a UN panel
stated that the settlements “contravened the Fourth
Geneva Convention forbidding the transfer of civilian
populations into occupied territory and could amount to war
crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International
Criminal Court (ICC).”
Below
is the New York Times article about the discomfort
felt by Meron’s fellow judges about his actions as head of
the international tribunal and their efforts to replace him:
By MARLISE SIMONS
Published: June 14, 2013
Published: June 14, 2013
PARIS
– A judge at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The
Hague has exposed a deep rift at the highest levels of the
court in a blistering letter suggesting that the court’s
president, an American, pressured other judges into
approving the recent acquittals of top Serb and Croat
commanders.
The
letter from the judge, Frederik Harhoff of Denmark, raised
serious questions about the credibility of the court, which
was created in 1993 to address the atrocities committed in
the wars in the former Yugoslavia.
Even
before Judge Harhoff’s letter was made public Thursday, in
the Danish newspaper Berlingske, the recent acquittals had
provoked a storm of complaints from international lawyers,
human rights groups and other judges at the court, who
claimed in private that the rulings had abruptly rewritten
legal standards that had been applied in earlier cases.
Experts say they see a shift in the court toward protecting
the interests of the military. “A decade ago, there was a
very strong humanitarian message coming out of the tribunal,
very concerned with the protection of civilians,” said
William Schabas, who teaches law at Middlesex University in
London. “It was not concerned with the prerogatives of the
military and the police. This message has now been weakened,
there is less protection for civilians and human rights.”
Other
lawyers agreed that the tribunal, which has pioneered new
laws, is sending a new message to other armies: they do not
need to be as frightened of international justice as they
might have been four or five years ago.
But
until now, no judge at the tribunal had openly attributed
the apparent change to the court’s current president,
Theodor Meron, 83, a longtime legal scholar and judge.
Judge
Harhoff’s letter, dated June 6, was e-mailed to 56 lawyers,
friends and associates; the newspaper did not say how it
obtained a copy. In his letter, Judge Harhoff, 64, who has
been on the tribunal since 2007, said that in two cases
Judge Meron, a United States citizen who was formerly an
Israeli diplomat, applied “tenacious pressure” on his fellow
judges in such a way that it “makes you think he was
determined to achieve an acquittal.”
“Have
any American or Israeli officials ever exerted pressure on
the American presiding judge (the presiding judge for the
court that is) to ensure a change of direction?” Judge
Harhoff asked. “We will probably never know.”
A
spokesman at the court declined to comment on the letter.
Other judges and lawyers were willing to speak, provided
that their names were not used.
By
their accounts, a mini-rebellion has been brewing against
Judge Meron, prompting some of the 18 judges of the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to
group around an alternative candidate for the scheduled
election for tribunal president this fall. Until now, Judge
Meron had been expected to be re-elected.
“I’d
say about half the judges are feeling very uncomfortable and
prefer to turn to a different candidate,” said a senior
court official. The official said he did not believe that
American officials had pressured Judge Meron to rule a
certain way in any case, “But I believe he wants to
cooperate with his government,” the official said. “He’s
putting on a lot of pressure and imposing internal deadlines
that do not exist.”
The
legal dispute that is the focus of Judge Harhoff’s letter
and that has led to sharp language in dissents is the degree
of responsibility that senior military leaders should bear
for war crimes committed by their subordinates.
In
earlier cases before the tribunal, a number of military or
police officers and politicians were convicted of massacres
and other war crimes committed by followers or subordinates
on the principle that they had been members of a “joint
criminal enterprise.”
In
contrast, three Serbian leaders and two Croatian generals
who played key roles during the war were acquitted recently
because judges argued that the men had not specifically
ordered or approved war crimes committed by subordinates.
Judge
Meron has led a push for raising the bar for conviction in
such cases, prosecutors say, to the point where a conviction
has become nearly impossible. Critics say he misjudged the
crucial roles played by the high-level accused and has set
legal precedents that will protect military commanders in
the future.
The
United Nations Security Council created the tribunal, a
costly endeavor, and has been pressing it for years to speed
up work and wind down, with the United States and Russia at
the forefront of those efforts.
By
early this year, 68 suspects had been sentenced and 18 had
been acquitted. But some of the highest ranking wartime
leaders have been judged at a time when the tribunal is
short-staffed and under continuing pressure to close down.
Today,
as the tribunal winds down it work, pressure over time is
among the complaints heard from judges’ chambers. Several
senior court officials, while declining to discuss
individual cases, said judges had been perturbed by
unacceptable pressures from Judge Meron to deliver judgments
before they were ready.
After
the only session to deliberate the acquittal that Judge
Meron had drafted in the case of the two Croatian generals,
one official said, the judge abruptly declined a request by
two dissenting judges for further debate.
In his
letter, Judge Harhoff also said that Judge Michele Picard of
France was recently rushed unduly and given only four days
to write her dissent against the majority decision to acquit
two Serbian police chiefs, Jovica Stanisic and Frank
Simatovic.
“She
was very taken aback by the acquittal and deeply upset about
the fast way it had to be handled,” said an official close
to the case.
Judge
Harhoff’s letter, which echoes protests by many
international experts, seems likely to add a fresh bruise to
the tribunal’s reputation.
“The
latest judgments here have brought before me a deep
professional and moral dilemma not previously faced,” he
wrote in conclusion. “The worst is the suspicion that some
of my colleagues have been behind a shortsighted political
pressure that completely changes the premises of my work in
my service to wisdom and the law.”
Alison
Weir is the president of the Council for the National Interest,
a former journalist and the founder of If
Americans Knew, a nonprofit organization that
focuses on the Israel-Palestine conflict, specializing in
statistical analysis. Weir writes and speaks widely about
Israel-Palestine, with particular focus on media coverage. Her
articles on the subject have been published in
anthologies both in the U.S. and abroad and in diverse online
and print publications.
This article was originally published at
Council for The National Interest
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