An excellent review by Anthony Daniels of ''Travesty', Dr John Laughland's new book on the show-trial of Slobodan Milosevic, appears in the new edition of The Spectator.
"No evidence worthy of the name was ever produced against Milosevic, despite huge expenditure and despite the arbitrary extensions of time the prosecution was granted in the hope that something really damning would turn up to prove its case. Nothing ever did. Does anyone doubt that, had there been knock-down evidence against Milosevic, it would not have been trumpeted around the world? In the event, many of the prosecution’s star witnesses gave evidence that exculpated Milosevic entirely."
Yet despite all of this, pro-war writers continue to talk of Milosevic's 'genocidal aggression'. (Oliver Kamm, a man who will need no introduction to readers of this blog, makes the claim regularly, while Nick Cohen, in his recently published pamphlet 'What's Left', berates sections of the left for siding with Milosevic's democratically elected Yugoslavian government instead of championing the cause of radical Islamic separatists linked to bin Laden.
It is time all those who continue to make unsubtantiated claims regarding Milosevic's 'crimes' either shut up or produce evidence . As Anthony Daniels says, after four years at The Hague, no evidence of any note was produced against Milosevic. If Messrs Kamm and Cohen do possess proof of Slobo's 'genocidal aggression', or his ordering of war crimes, then the very least they can do is to make it public.
UPDATE: On the subject of Cohen, here's an extract from a sales-pitch for his new book he made yesterday on the Guardian's Comment is Free website:
Journalists wondered whether the Americans were puffing up Zarqawi's role in the violence - as a foreigner he was a convenient enemy - but they couldn't deny the ferocity of the terror. Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Slobodan Milosevic, they went for the professors and technicians who could make a democratic Iraq work.
If like me, you are curious as to which 'professors and technicians' Slobodan Milosevic 'went for', Cohen can be contacted at nick@nickcohen.net.
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1 comment:
I did - he said
Dear Neil,
It's in chapter 5 if you've got the book taken from Roy Gutman's account
of the decaptiation of Mulsim civil society in Prejidor -- going for the
judges, teachers etc The Hague hearings backed him up.
All the best,Nick
Prejidor is in Srpska & thus not under milosevic 7 Gutman has admitted to claiming to have seen atrocities in Omarska long before he was ever there.
I have mentioned on my blog
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