Al Hayat - Brammertz Will Prosecute Karadzic. But Whom Will Bellemare Prosecute?, July 23, 2008
By Randa Takieddine
The arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is extremely important because it gives a beam of hope to the peoples of the world that, no matter how long it takes, there is something called international justice. Karadzic is accused of ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity, which killed more than 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995. Remarkably, the international prosecutor who will lead the case in The Hague is Serge Brammertz, who for six months headed an international investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri. Brammertz resigned from his post to take over from Carla Del Ponte in The Hague.
It is an encouraging coincidence. It revives hope for the Lebanese that the perpetrators of crimes against politicians, journalists and military personnel will be revealed and eventually tried, even if the investigation drags on a while.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Yugoslavia fell apart and its six republics declared their independence in 1991. Karadzic and Slobodan Milosevic tried to join Croatia and Bosnia to Serbia; Karadzic, helped by Ratko Mladic, carried out the ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Bosnia.
Karadzic is called the "Osama bin Laden of Europe." His arrest prompts us to hope that the crimes that have been committed in Lebanon since the assassination of Hariri, and even prior to this, might one day see the arrest of the network that carried them out. Prior to the assassination of Hariri, his comrades and Minister Basil Fleihan, there were the killings of leaders and presidents in Lebanon, which were not addressed, even though many are convinced that the same network that killed Hariri and his comrades had equally assassinated Kamal Jumblatt, Rene Mouawad, and Bashir Gemayel. It is true that these did not take place during the same period, but the network that undertook the previous assassinations, which did not spare leading journalists like Salim al-Lawzi, used various methods during the course of political developments in Lebanon.
The assassination of Hariri and Fleihan and the subsequent crimes against journalists Gebran Tueni and Samir Kassir, and politicians Pierre Gemayel, Walid Eido and his son, George Hawi, Antoine Ghanem, and General Francois Hajj, and the attempts against May Chidiac, Marwan Hamade and Elias Murr, are crimes that fall into the framework of a spate of killings intended to keep Lebanon in the terror camp.
With the arrest of Karadzic, we hope that the head of the international investigation into the killing of Hariri and his comrades, Canada's Daniel Bellemare, will speed up the completion of his investigation to create an international tribunal by the end of 2009. Despite all of the political developments in France and the US and the two countries' openness to Syria and Iran, hope remains that Bellemare is keen to remain distant from politics and conduct his investigation in a professional fashion. He is a retired judge who, unlike his predecessor Brammertz, does not seek a post other than that of international public prosecutor when he finishes his investigation. In the view of some, including his predecessor Judge Detlev Mehlis, Brammertz was secretive. However, he acted like a historian of the crime, and not an investigator. As for Bellemare, he is leading a professional investigation and is not talking about it with anyone. He meets with officials from the United Nations Security Council but does not reveal any information about the investigation.
Bellemare requires testimony and evidence that should be protected, so that his investigation can yield results. International justice takes time, since it is a serious effort. No matter how long it takes, the punishment of the criminals, in the end, will resemble the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially in the Middle East. The UN resolution creating an international tribunal for the Hariri assassination is not just words. Whoever believes that developments in the region will abolish this tribunal can refer to what happened to Karadzic, 13 years after the search for him began. Perhaps this arrest represents hope, for those who have been disappointed due to French and American policy developments in the region, even though the Middle East's Berlin Wall has yet to come down.
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