PRAGUE — It has been only a little more than 15 years since the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: In their effort to do justice, they obstruct a more important goal — peace.
Such complaints have been expressed most vociferously when sitting heads of state are accused of crimes. The charges filed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur are the latest example. Indeed, the denunciations of the justice process this time are more intense and more vehement than in the past.
The complaints were also loud in 1995 when the prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicted the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadzic, and his military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and even louder when they were indicted again later in the same year for the massacre at Srebrenica.