Forced Perspective

It's hard to see the big picture sometimes. For a long time this was just a building that, while at first totally alien, is now comfortingly familiar. In a quiet area in The Hague, nestled between the city centre and the beach, the ICTY is the home of so much more than meets the eye.

The trial of Radovan Karadzic towards which I have been working the past 4 months has finally started. The sense of a massive undertaking was palpable the moment that Judge Kwon asked Prosecutor Alan Tieger to start his opening statement. I have worked on many different elements of this case. Some things are shocking and confronting, for certain, but these occur in small, relatively out of context tasks. Perhaps I find myself working on organising evidence for trial and come across something incredibly graphic. It's easy to compartmentalise and disassociate yourself from what you're seeing. When Mr. Tieger started to summarise clearly and concisely the many different elements and facts of the case that had once been a jumbled mess of information in my head it suddenly became so clear. It's almost like I had the knowledge of the case by not the understanding to put the many pieces together. He told the story of Radovan Karadzic as I knew it but had never heard it. Parts of the story seemed so familiar but I had never put them into context. Yes, Sarajevo was shelled and sniped for 44 months, Srebrenica was taken over and thousands were executed, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced and thousands killed during the process. Karadzic stood astride all of these atrocities as the Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb forces.

Was this destruction and death just a product of war? No, it was the purpose of the war.

"[He] harnessed the forces of nationalism, hatred and fear to implement his vision of an ethnically separated Bosnia."

It was an amazing opening statement, and it's not over yet (there is still one more day to go). But this isn't what really opened my eyes. This made the facts of the case more clear. Something else made this new clarity that much more real. I suppose months of working on esoteric elements of trial preparation can very quickly skew your perspective of exactly what you are working towards. Yesterday things were very clearly brought into focus.

It's not so much the fact that the building was surrounded by media. It's not the fact that it appears on every major news syndicate. All of these things are relatively straight forward and to be expected. This is a massive trial that spans over years of violent history in Europe, specifically the Balkans. No, it's the presence of the victims.

The ICTY is unique international court in the sense that it is completely divorced from its context. The crimes were committed in the battle torn Balkans, yet the trial takes place in the placid city of the Hague. Compare this to the ICTR or the SCSL, both which exist, for the most part, in the places where these crimes occured. The purpose behind this are clear. Where the crimes occured is also where you will find the people who were affected. It's important for victims to feel that they are represented, especially if any kind of post war reconciliation is to be achieved. If you leave work from the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania you are surrounded by people who fled Rwanda during the genocide. Everyday you would be mingling in with communities that have been destroyed by the civil war.

The viewing gallery was completely filled up by media and diplomats from various countries. This meant that every employee watched the beginning of the trial streaming live on their computers. Some people even brought their friends into the office to watch it as well. Everyone, no matter what case they were on, was watching Courtroom 1 and the opening statement against Radovan Karadzic. But the difference that I felt most keenly was that of the Srebrenica wives and daughters. They filed through the corridor and in to the conference room just outside my office. There, just like the rest of us, they watched the trial start. To me it was a moment where all the facts came together in a neat package, for victims it was so much more than that, it was a truth that has tortured them for 14 years. And there they all sat, more than 50, all seated in one large room watching the proceedings that had such an incredible personal significance to them. Wives and daughters who had, in some cases, lost most of the men in their family and had been forced to raise the decimated families in an unforgiving warzone. Solemn respect doesn't even begin to qualify the feelings that come from encountering people who have suffered through so much. The few times I would pass them in the hallway was strange at first. They knew everything about this conflict from intimate personal experience but so little about what goes on at the tribunal. To me I know nothing about what these people really went though during the war, but I know exactly how this tribunal operates from day to day. As some of them filed passed our office on their way out of the building, after watching the opening statement, they would peek their heads into the office and with a gentle smile and say thankyou.

Everyone at this tribunal is here to do justice for the people of the former Yugoslavia, but sometimes you need to be reminded, especially when Bosnia feels so far away from the Hague. Sometimes you need to step back from the specific and finicky legal, administrative and procedural issues and realise that this story is a tragically real one for a huge amount of people. Sometimes certain things need to force your perspective towards the most important reason behind these trials, the victims.

Quote of the day:

"Power is the relation of a given person to other persons, in which the more this person expresses opinions, theories and justifications of the collective action the less is his participation in that action."

- War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy

Innocent and Executed

With every passing week it is becoming increasingly clear that an innocent man was executed in Texas on 17 Feb, 2004.

The New Yorker published an article in September (It's quite lengthy!) outlining the case in all its excruciating detail. To summarise it briefly, Todd Willingham was charged with the murder of his three children by deliberating setting fire to the family home on 23 Dec, 1991 . The case against him was a mix of witness testimony, psychological examinations and, of course, arson forensics. The witnesses stated that Willingham appeared calm outside the front of his house as it burned down and didn't seem to make any attempt to rescuse his children from the house. The psychologists stated that he was a man with violent tendencies and a disturbed mind due to his graphic tattoos and interest in explicit and violent music. However, the most damning of all the evidence was that of the forensic arsonist. What he explained is all very techinical, but suffice to say he found evidence that fuel had been poured around the childrens bedroom, essentially turning the room into a death trap, while making it easy for Willingham to escape.

He was found guilty and sentenced to die.

Even before Willingham was executed almost all of the witnesses recanted their testimony. Most of them stating that Willingham was indeed extremely distressed and had to be physically restrained by firemen to stop him from reentering the house. The psychologist was completely discredited and turned out to be a close friend of the prosecutor. But the most important element is the forensic evidence. A prominent fire expert reexamined the evidence brought against Willingham at trial and was shocked at just how archaic the methodology was. Dr. Craig Beyler prepared a report (found here). Dr. Beyler found that the methods were similar to that of a "mystic or psychic" and were completely without merit or understanding of fire analysis.

As if all the dysfunctional elements of the Texas justice system were coaelscing into one tragic event, Sharon "Killer" Keller (see below) was the judge presiding in Willingham's final Habeas appeal to the Texas Court of Appeal. She refused the compelling claims of innocence.

This is the kind of morbid holy grail that anti-death penalty supporters have been waiting for.

At the moment Governor Rick Perry has appointed a panel of experts to examine the fire and the scientific methodology used at trial. However there have been further scandals regarding Rick Perry's attempt to cover up the whole issue. Three members, including the chairman, were removed three days before they were meant to review the expert report that refutes the fire being arson. The officials have stated that they were met with representatives of Rick Perry's and were pressured and influenced. It's all very political and hard to pin down with any certainty, but one thing is for sure, and that's the fact that something is seriously out of whack.

Perhaps the saddest element of this entire case is that the truly callous and cruel amongst those who support the death penalty are coming out of the woodwork. It's as if, once sentenced to death, you must be proved innocent beyond reasonable doubt. This simply isn't the case and it is only necessary to present that there was clearly reasonable doubt and that no charge of arson could possibly be upheld. It seems that death penalty supporters are more frustrated than horrified with this present situation. They would rather innocent people weren't executed so that they didn't have to explain it away.

For me, the execution of an innocent man is an incredible tragedy and one that can never be rectified. However, the potential for innocent victims has never played an important role in my opposition to the death penalty. The issue goes far deeper than the fact that the death penalty could execute an innocent person. The death penalty is far too indiscriminate with the pain and suffering it imposes on those caught in its mechanisms. It's an act of intolerable cruelty to the victim's family, the condemned's family, the jurors and the society that witnesses a state sanctioned execution. For as long as we hold on to nothing else but the fear that innocent people will be executed as our founding principles for opposing this barbaric practice, we are tacitly supporting the death penalty in situations where there is no doubt as to a man's guilt.

What is so crucially important about this case is seeing that the state of Texas is forced to pay the price of confronting the truth. I have no doubt that the very foundations of the death penalty will be uprooted if the innocence of Todd Willingham is found to be finally irrefutable. What is it going to take for this conclusion to be reached? Probably alot of politics, dirty fighting and nitpicking, but I have no doubt that in the long run this institution of death in Texas and the U.S. will suffer a mortal wound from which it won't ever recover.

Quote of the day:

"The only statement I want to make is that I'm an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit."
- Cameron Todd Willingham's last words