Statement by Deputy Permanent Representative Maria Zabolotskaya at a UNSC Briefing on International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals
Mr. President,
We have closely read the latest semi-annual reports of the President and Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT; the Mechanism).
The documents are voluminous, hefty, but they still lack substance. There is no holistic vision of how to implement the instructions of the Council, which established the IRMCT as a small and purely temporary structure, whose size and staff are to diminish over time.
Instead, we discovered an odd assertion in the report that the Mechanism became genuinely residual only in 2023. We have to once again recall that the Mechanism was established by the Council almost 15 years ago precisely as a residual mechanism. The question arises: Does that mean that for the past 15 years the Mechanism has essentially sabotaged the instructions of the Council? In our view, it is exactly what led to the fact that the Mechanism now continues to exist with a bloated staff and a huge budget.
Those financial and staffing reductions that are referred to in the latest report are certainly steps in the right direction. However, the level of those efforts at the current juncture is completely insufficient. Such “selective” changes do not change anything, they are merely “drops in the ocean.” It is high time we carried out an in-depth review of the situation around the IRMCT with a focus on its prompt closure and handover of residual functions.
Given a completely hollowed-out “judicial basket,” the continued existence of the Mechanism in its current form and with a budget of over 60 million dollars is nothing but absurd. We have already stated and we’ll continue to recall that the International Court of Justice, which is currently literally inundated with lawsuits and requests for advisory opinions, is operating on a budget half as large as that of the Mechanism.
Our position regarding the successors to the residual functions after the closure of the Mechanism is well known. We believe that national law enforcement bodies can perfectly cope with such tasks as handling “contempt of court” cases, protecting victims and witnesses, and supervising the enforcement of sentences. Certain functions, such as providing technical assistance to national investigative bodies, could be absorbed by specialized agencies of the UN system.
We trust that the UN Secretary General's forthcoming report will include just reasonable and feasible options. We urge you not to spend the 8,500-word limit on describing options that are patently unrealistic, including those that have already been mentioned in the IRMCT closure strategy and have been repeatedly harshly criticized. These include the establishment of some kind of “omnibus” residual mechanism for all ad hoc tribunals. We wish to recall that the Council's instructions provide for the closure of the Mechanism, not its replacement with new structures. Nor can there be any discussions about the handover of the functions of the Mechanism to the so-called International Criminal Court. This is a politicized structure, mired in corruption, and it has nothing to do either with the United Nations or with the administration of justice.
We also wish to note attempts to extol the “legacy” of the IRMCT and its predecessor, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Let us explain what we mean by this term – “legacy”.
There were two main categories of proceedings at the ICTY.
The first category was intended against the Serbs, and was purely accusatory. Nobody had any scruples there, any procedural violations were allowed, false testimony was given. If there were insurmountable doubts, in particular, with regard to the presence of the criminal intent, then the judges of the tribunal came up with some shady innovations, including the pseudo-legal construct of a “joint criminal enterprise”.
The second category of proceedings was intended for non-Serbs, and was purely exculpatory. In these cases, the ICTY successfully “swept under the rug” the atrocities perpetrated by real thugs Naser Oric, Ante Gotovina, Ramush Haradinaj and the like. Pristina judge Danica Marinković noted that she had documentary evidence of the heinous atrocities committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army, but the ICTY paid no heed.
It is appalling that the cases concerning the horrific crimes perpetrated by a number of former leaders of so-called Kosovo, which should have been dealt with by the ICTY, are now for some reason being under consideration by some subsidiary bodies. Based on this alone, we can draw a conclusion that the ICTY has failed in addressing the task entrusted to it by the UN Security Council back in 1993 in resolution 827, namely “the criminal prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia” on the basis of the principle of individual criminal responsibility, i.e. irrespective of what nationality or ethnicity people belong to.
The clear disparity in the so-called “justice” by the ICTY is borne out by simple statistics. Serbs were sentenced to a subtotal imprisonment of 904 years, Croats – of 171 years and Kosovo Albanians – of 19 years. Proportionally, 85 per cent of those convicted were Serbs, 12 per cent were Croats, and only 3 per cent were Bosnians. This blatantly biased miscarriage of justice is precisely the “legacy” of the ICTY and the IRMCT. No wonder therefore that their decisions are not respected in any country of the region, which is clearly seen from the reports of the IRMCT Prosecutor.
By the way, witnesses in trials in the non-Serbian – “strictly exculpatory” – category were regularly murdered or intimidated into changing their testimony. In response to all questions from our delegation about this lawlessness, the ICTY officials only shrugged, saying that they were allegedly unable to protect them. That is why, when we see that the IRMCT reports extol the importance of certain functions, such as witness protection, we remember that those who really needed protection are already dead. This is also the “legacy” of the ICTY and the Mechanism.
Serb defendants were also killed, some – in the process of detention, others – while in custody. Attempts to present such cases as alleged “suicides” do not hold water.
Mr. President,
More than 30 years have elapsed since the establishment of the ICTY. We urge you to finally turn the page of its shameful “legacy” and transfer all the functions of both the ICTY and its successor, the IRMCT, to the national law enforcement agencies.
What deserves our particular attention is a prompt handover of the function of supervising the execution of sentences to States of citizenship of those condemned. The implementation of this function by the Mechanism cannot be deemed satisfactory. Sentencing states continue to ignore even the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules), which were explicitly set forth in the resolution on the IRMCT.
We are also extremely concerned about the state of health of Serbian General Ratko Mladić, who is being held in the UN Detention Unit in the Hague. He is literally hanging between life and death. According to his relatives and lawyers, Mr. Mladić's condition is extremely serious, he can hardly focus his attention and maintain a conversation, he spends most of his time in a half-awake state, and there is a threat of amputation of his leg, which was avoided only thanks to the intervention of Serbian doctors. We support Mr. Mladić's lawyers and family members as they continue to fight for his life and his right to medical care. We consider blatantly inhumane the decision taken by the IRMCT President on May 10 to reject his request for early release on humanitarian grounds or to allow him to serve the remainder of his sentence in Serbia.
We emphasize that the way Mr. Mladić is treated by the Mechanism stands in stark contrast to the approach of that body to the case of Félicien Kabuga. There, the Mechanism took into account the circumstances related to the defendant's health, froze the proceedings and undertook to consider his release from custody on medical grounds.
We call on the Mechanism to finally take a decision to transfer the General to Serbia to serve his sentence. Otherwise, if events develop in a negative scenario, it is the Mechanism and its leadership that will bear the consequences.
In conclusion, we would like to stress that the international community cannot afford to spend $60 million annually on a judicial mechanism that has no cases. The Council needs to adopt a responsible decision and redirect those funds to more worthy causes.
In addition, we would like to state the following. We have noted today that a host of Member States have made statements on the inadmissibility of rewriting history and glorifying criminals. We trust that this position is principled and consistent and will be applied as well, for example, to the rewriting of the history of the Second World War and the glorification of the Nazis as well as those who collaborated with them, as set out by the International Nuremberg Tribunal.
Thank you.
