22 Mar Holbrooke Promised Karadzic He Wouldn’t Be Prosecuted
That is the conclusion of the most comprehensive study of the issue to date, “Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies: A Scholars’ Initiative,” conducted by Purdue University. From the New York Times, which held follow-up interviews with some of the sources cited in the study:
Charles W. Ingrao, the study’s co-editor, said that three senior State Department officials, one of them retired, and several other people with knowledge of Mr. Holbrooke’s activities told him that Mr. Holbrooke assured Mr. Karadzic in July 1996 that he would not be pursued by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague if he left politics.
Mr. Karadzic had already been charged by the tribunal with genocide and other crimes against civilians.
Two of the sources cited anonymously in the new study, a former senior State Department official who spent almost a decade in the Balkans and another American who was involved with international peacekeeping there in the 1990s, provided additional details in interviews with The New York Times, speaking on condition that they not be further identified.
The former State Department official said he was told of the offer by people who were close to Mr. Holbrooke’s team at the time. The other source said that Mr. Holbrooke personally and emphatically told him about the deal on two occasions.
While the two men agreed, as one of them put it, that “Holbrooke did the right thing and got the job done,” the recurring story of the deal has dogged Mr. Holbrooke.
[snip]
Mr. Ingrao said Mr. Holbrooke used Slobodan Milosevic, then the Serbian leader, and other Serbian officials as intermediaries to convey the promise of immunity and to reach the deal with Mr. Karadzic.
“The agreement almost came to grief when Holbrooke vigorously refused Karadzic’s demand, and Hill’s appeal, that he affix his signature to it,” the study says, citing unidentified State Department sources.
The study, the product of eight years of research by historians, jurists and social scientists from all sides of the conflict, was an effort to reconcile disparate views of the wars that tore the former Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, Mr. Ingrao said.
[snip]
The American who was involved in peacekeeping insisted in an interview that Mr. Holbrooke himself told him that he had made a deal with Mr. Karadzic to get him to leave politics. He recalled meeting Mr. Holbrooke in Sarajevo, Bosnia, on the eve of Bosnian elections in November 2000, just after Mr. Milosevic had finally been ousted from power in Serbia.
Mr. Holbrooke was worried about the outcome of the Bosnian vote because he knew that Mr. Karadzic was still secretly running his nationalist political party and picking candidates, including mayors and police chiefs who had run prison camps and organized massacres.
“Holbrooke was angry; he was ranting,” the American recalled. He quoted Mr. Holbrooke as saying: “That son of a bitch Karadzic. I made a deal with him that if he’d pull out of politics, we wouldn’t go after him. He’s broken that deal and now we’re going to get him.”
Mr. Karadzic’s party won those elections in the Bosnian Serb republic. Shortly afterward, he disappeared from public view.
Not surprisingly, Holbrooke continues to insist that “[n]o one in the U.S. government ever promised anything, nor made a deal of any sort with Karadzic.” Such intransigence appears increasingly desperate — indeed, Holbrooke refused the New York Times‘ request to comment on the study’s allegations. After all, who are you going to believe: a study with no partisan axe to grind, or someone who has every incentive to lie?
P.S. As is usually the case, the New York Times‘ article incorrectly describes the Holbrooke-Karadzic deal as an “immunity agreement.” The deal is more accurately described as an agreement not to prosecute in exchange for Karadzic’s cooperation — no different than a prosecutor who promises a criminal who “flips” that he won’t be prosecuted in exchange for his testimony against his higher-ups. Readers interested in the legal arguments for why the agreement might be enforceable against the ICTY should read the defence motion here.
P.P.S. In case there are any readers out there who don’t know, I am currently serving as one of Dr. Karadzic’s legal advisers. All the normal caveats about bias thus apply.
This is interesting story, but it appears that all this study does is to suggest circumstantial evidence. This is one of many hearsay stories circulating around Balkans, which will probably never be confirmed publically. In other words, the existence of such agreement is not proven as it follows from information available. Additionally, why would one trust Karadzic’s insistence that there was immunity agreement signed on 18-19 July 1996 in Belgrade between him and Holbrooke? Be it as it may, Karadzic defence team appeals fails to convince that alleged existence of the Holbrooke agreement could have prevented ICTY from exercising jurisdiction.
Jernej,
To be sure, the existence of the agreement doesn’t prove that it has legal effect. The ICTY Appeals Chamber will ultimately decide that. As for the agreement itself, though, what more evidence do you want? Do you really expect Holbrooke to admit that he made the deal? The study may rely on hearsay — but it’s hearsay that comes directly from Holbrooke and that relies on multiple sources. Again, who is more likely to be lying — the sources, who have nothing to gain from telling the truth, or Holbrooke, who has everything to gain from lying?
It would be good to leave final determination on who is more likely to be lying, Karadzic or Holbrooke to proven facts and not to hearsay evidence.
It’s not about whether Karadzic or Holbrooke is lying — it is about whether Holbrooke or the multiple sources who have said Holbrooke admitted the deal to them is lying. You don’t have to believe Karadzic to conclude the deal existed.
As for hearsay evidence, do you support amending the ICC, ICTY, and ICTR Statutes to prohibit its use? That seems to be the logical implication of your position.
But Kevin, if there actually was a written agreement, how is it possible that Karadzic does not have a copy? Wouldn’t he have kept such a document as one of his most prized possessions? And if he was stupid enough to accept a purely oral promise, why shouldn’t he suffer the consequences? At any rate, agreement or not, the odds of the Appeals Chamber finding in favor of Karadzic are negligible.
Marko,
As a predictive matter, I agree with you. As for the written copy, what good would it do? Everyone agrees that Holbrooke didn’t sign it. So the better evidence seems to me to be the significant number of US insiders who have confirmed the deal’s existence, many of whom heard it directly from Holbrooke and have no incentive to lie.
Of course, Kevin, it seems better to you to rely on US insiders. But Holbrooke denies all these statements.
As for hearsay evidence, we all know that it cannot be admitted unconditionally. In other words, what is the probative value and reliability of Karadzic’s statements that there was such agreement?
So what if Holbrooke denies them? He has every incentive to lie, as does Karadzic. That is why the hearsay has such probative value — multiple sources have confirmed that Holbrooke told them he made the deal, and none of those sources have an incentive to lie. So what exactly do you find so troubling about their statements, other than they indicate that the deal was, in fact, made?
suppose we accept that such an agreement existed. You write that this is no different than a prosecutor flipping his promise. Last time I checked, though, Holbrooke wasn’t a prosecutor. More generally, UN officials and other mediators have long argued that a downside of criminal tribunals is precisely their inability to make credible promises of this sort, which can sometimes be useful in peace negotiations. It strikes me that any legal argument that claims that such agreements are enforceable would have to rely on a theory about ICTs that makes them very much less independent from politics than many would now believe to be the case.
zaoem,
Your point is very well taken. You can see the legal arguments for holding that the promise is enforceable against the ICTY in the motion to which I link in the post.
They both have a long and wicked track record.
To figure out whether Holbrooke is lying or not is like discussing whether anaconda is friendlier than a slightly more aggressive python. One quick peek into East Timor and Bosnia concludes that these guys are two serpents with slightly different characteristics.
Thanks to “the deal”, Karadzic’s wet dream — a separate entity created with the use of genocidal policies — is still thriving. Unfortunately for the tens of thousands dead and hundreds of thousands “displaced”, the legality of real issues are not being as widely discussed as these smoke signals thanks to the ever liberating western (corporate) media.