Word: bagosora
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Three weeks ago, the trial of Rwandan Colonel Theoneste Bagosora for the murder of 800,000 people in 100 days was supposed to begin in Tanzania. However, his current boycott of the proceedings has led to an adjournment of his trial until September. Bagosora will be facing the International War Crimes Tribunal for Rwanda, a special U.N. tribunal set up to punish those responsible for the ethnically-motivated massacres in Rwanda in 1994. In another U.N. war crimes trial, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has taken a similar strategy of obstructionism. He delays his trial with each of his attempts...
Although the worlds of Rwanda and Yugoslavia seem to be vastly different, the machinations of both their leaders in the war crimes tribunals threaten the authority and future success of the international legal system and the ICC. For international jurisdiction even to have a chance, Bagosora and Milosovic must not be allowed to manipulate and circumvent the courts...
However, the defendants hope to kill that dream. The current defenses of Bagosora and Milosovic seem to be torn from the same page. They both have chosen to impede the court’s proceedings by attacking its legitimacy. And their defense may be working. Bagosora and Milosovic have found the Achilles’ heel by playing right into Western insecurities about international authority over sovereign nations and their leaders. Take away their names, adjust a few statistics, and one could be looking at a pro-Western general and politician...
...questions some Western governments—especially the U.S.—pose are precisely the ones that Bagosora and Milosovic are asking. Questioning physical evidence and direct testimony is not their game plan. Instead, they attack the court itself, as well as the “prejudiced” foreign prosecution...