A difficult task for the Hague Tribunal

The presumed war criminal Radovan Karadžić has been handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The newspaper Der Standard comments that to avoid losing credibility, the Hague Tribunal needs substantive evidence against Karadžić in the upcoming trial. "Right after Karadžić was handed over, voices rang out across Europe that finally justice would be done for the vicitims of Srebrenica. But should the tribunal be the highest authority in this matter? Only if Karadžić is tried on the basis of solid evidence will this judgement have a conciliatory effect on the enemy peoples of Bosnia. And in this case the prosecution will have to surpass itself. In the trial against Milošević it attemted to deal with all the wars in the former Yugoslavia - until the ex-president died. In the trial against the radical leader Vojislav Šešelj, the prosecution makes a fool of itself on a daily basis with weak witnesses and paltry evidence. In Karadžić's case this cannot be allowed to happen. Otherwise rather than having a healing effect, the trial will only cause ill-feeling."

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