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	Milosevic won"t escape history"s verdict by Richard Dicker International Herald Tribune   March 13, 2006   Slobodan Milosevic conducted his legal defense much as he did his political life: with bombast, bullying and belligerence. Observing Milosevic for weeks and weeks in The Hague in the first half of his four-year trial, it became quickly clear to me that he was undertaking a political offensive in the courtroom rather than presenting a rebuttal of the 66 charges he faced.   In his opening statement in February 2002, Milosevic ignored the hundreds of thousands killed and the millions forced from their homes in the four wars he lost while asserting Serbian nationalism. Instead, playing to the audience back home, he seemed intent on securing his place in the hearts and minds of Serbs by castigating NATO"s air war in Yugoslavia. The defiant tone continued throughout, as he badgered witnesses, insulted judges and prosecutors, and denied the chamber"s right to try him.   But although his death - and the absence of a verdict - denies the victims of horrific crimes in the former Yugoslavia final judgment, it should not overshadow a broader accomplishment. Milosevic"s death may have pre-empted a verdict, but he did not escape the process of justice. While the victims of the Balkan wars will not get the satisfaction of hearing a verdict in this case, the man who flaunted his power as Serbia"s strongman died under indictment, in custody and with a long and official enumeration of his alleged crimes on record for posterity.   The trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia amassed enormous evidence of Milosevic"s role in genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the ethnic cleansing that his policies set in motion between 1992 and 1999 in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. His death sets back efforts to show that ethnic cleansing was not the product of one ethnic group but of political programs forged by individual leaders. It does not undo, however, the achievements of more than 10 years of the tribunal"s work in bringing him and other high-level officials to justice.   Milosevic"s death and the termination of his trial also underscore the importance of identifying the appropriate lessons to take from the four years of proceedings. International criminal courts trying senior officials for massive crimes face inherently complex, thorny and time-consuming challenges. On top of the sheer scale of atrocity crimes, there is the difficulty of proving the guilt of a former senior official who was nowhere near the multiple crime scenes.   Under the best of circumstances, these trials will be lengthy. In this context, international prosecutors should consider focusing their indictments on the most representative crimes for which there is the strongest evidence. In retrospect, separate Milosevic trials on the crimes committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo would have been more manageable than one combined proceeding.   But the trial"s extreme length was due to more than the burden of the 66 counts of crimes of against humanity, war crimes and genocide contained in the joint indictment. There were repeated delays because of court-ordered adjournments to address Milosevic"s health problems. In addition, from the public gallery I witnessed the judges - with the best of intentions - bending over backwards to respect Milosevic"s invoked right to represent himself far beyond the point where he had blatantly abused that important but qualified right.   As a human rights lawyer concerned with fair trial rights, I was dismayed to see Milosevic allowed to ask the same question of a witness over and over again, badger and bully witnesses, particularly those of lower social standing, and make interminable political speeches that had no relevance to the matter of his guilt or innocence on the charges. During the prosecution phase of the trial, Milosevic used far more time in "rebuttal" than the prosecutors used in presenting their evidence.   Those accused by international courts cannot be allowed to obstruct justice by deliberately delaying and muddling the process. At international tribunals, judges need to assert their control of the courtroom to manage difficult proceedings while fully respecting the right of fair trial for the accused. In future trials, the judges will need to better calibrate the right of an accused at trial with the overarching interest of justice in a fair, efficient and well-managed proceeding.   When an accused dies before a verdict is reached there is an inevitable sense of incompleteness. In this important case, where so much was at stake, that sense is much greater, even though important advances were made. When the tribunal tries others - including Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, whose apprehension is long past due - it can put to use what it learned from the Milosevic case.   There is one message that the aborted trial of Slobodan Milosevic, with its admitted shortcomings, cannot obscure: Absolute impunity for crimes that shock the conscience of humankind, regardless of the rank of the accused, is a thing of the past.   (Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch"s international justice program, observed the Milosevic trial in 2002, 2003 and 2004).
	Abu Ghraib Prison to become warehouse after US Quits Jail by Mariam Karouny Reuters Iraq   Baghdad, Mar 10, 2006   Iraq said on Friday it would turn Baghdad"s Abu Ghraib prison into a warehouse after the U.S. military abandons the building in the next few months.   In a surprise announcement, the U.S. military said on Thursday it planned to end its operations at the prison that was a torture center under Saddam Hussein and became a symbol of shame for America"s occupation of Iraq. U.S. officials had suggested Iraqi authorities might continue to use it as a jail.   But Iraqi justice minister Abd al-Hussein Shandel told Reuters: "There will be no detainees in Abu Ghraib.It will just be used as a storage facility for the Justice Ministry," he said of the sprawling prison complex.   The U.S. military said 4,500 inmates held at Abu Ghraib on suspicion of insurgent activity would be transferred elsewhere once a new site at the nearby airport was completed.   International and Iraqi human rights groups called on U.S. officials on Friday to give them access to the new facility to see under what conditions prisoners were being held.   Abu Ghraib had until recently also held 2,400 regular criminals under the control of the Justice Ministry. But Shandel said these had already been transferred to other sites.   Abu Ghraib gained global notoriety in 2004 when photographs were published showing U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners, some naked, or threatened with snarling dogs..   The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" in the jail, said the ICRC should be allowed to visit prisoners once they were transferred to the new detention center.   ICRC spokeswoman Dorothea Krimitsas declined to comment directly on the decision to close the jail, but said: "If they are transferred to another place where we could have access to them, that would be very good news." She said ICRC experts had been unable to visit Abu Ghraib since January 2005 because the Baghdad area was too dangerous.   In all, 14,589 people are held in four U.S. sites in Iraq, more than half of them at Camp Bucca in the southern desert.   Critics, however, dismissed the significance of the closure of Abu Ghraib since the detentions will continue as before. "They can"t erase what they did simply by moving to other prisons, said Abdul Rahman al-Mashadani, head of Iraq"s Hammurabi rights group, "and I don"t think we will be allowed to visit the new prisons and report the violations there."   Amman. March 12, 2006   Unmasked: the face of prisoner 151716, the man under the hood, by Hassan Fattah. (NYT / Reuters)   Ali Shalal Qaissi''s wounds are still raw. There is the mangled hand, an old injury that became infected by the shackles chafing his skin. There is the slight limp, made worse by days tied in uncomfortable positions.   And most of all, there are the nightmares of his nearly six-month ordeal at Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad, in 2003 and 2004.   Mr Qaissi, 43, was prisoner 151716 of cellblock 1A. The picture of him standing hooded atop a cardboard box, attached to electrical wires with his arms stretched wide in an eerily prophetic pose, became the indelible symbol of the torture at Abu Ghraib. The US military announced last week it would abandon the prison and turn it over to the Iraqi Government.   "I never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way," he said, as he sat in an office in Amman. That said, he is now a prisoner advocate who clearly understands the power of the image.   Researchers with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they have interviewed Mr Qaissi and, with lawyers suing military contractors in a class-action suit over the abuse, believe that he is the man in the photograph.   Under the government of Saddam Hussein, Mr Qaissi was a mukhtar, in effect a neighbourhood mayor. After the fall of the Government, he managed a car park belonging to a mosque in Baghdad.   He was arrested in October 2003, he said, because he loudly complained to the military, human rights organisations and the media about soldiers dumping garbage on a local soccer field.   He said it soon became evident that the goal was to coax him to divulge names of people who might be connected to attacks on US forces.   Mr Qaissi is today an activist for prisoners'' rights in Iraq. Shortly after being released from Abu Ghraib in 2004, he started the Association of Victims of American Occupation Prisons with several other men immortalised in the Abu Ghraib pictures.   Mr Qaissi said he harboured no animosity towards America or Americans. "I forgive the people who did these things to us," he said. "But I want their help in preventing these sorts of atrocities from continuing."
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