In this long judgement of some 2, pages covering a spectrum of crimes committed by the six accused, 80 paragraphs! How did the Trial Chamber judges weigh the elements of psychological and physical damage, cultural heritage and military target? The criterion of proportionality is based on the idea that the military gains achieved must be concrete and direct.
Was that not the case? Or was the cultural, psychological and physical harm caused to the besieged populations too serious in comparison with the direct, concrete advantages obtained? This point of view was vigorously contested in a dissenting opinion by Judge Fausto Pocar. These divergences of analysis between the ICTY judges reflect the current state of debate on the laws of war. How should psychological harm, which the judgment points to, be measured? Should it even be taken into account?
How can a commander in the thick of battle determine the long-term psychological damage he is inflicting? And how should the cultural value of an object be added to psychological harm and weighed against the proportionality criterion of international humanitarian law?
These questions reflect a wider one: how far should the definition of war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide be taken? Since the birth of the ICTY in , these definitions have continued to expand, with a potential longer term risk of undermining the whole judicial edifice. If every crime becomes a potential international crime, then there is the risk that international crimes will become diluted, commonplace and finally lose the power to call to account.
This is perhaps what the majority of judges wanted to counterbalance in this last judgment of the ICTY before it closes its doors. The bridge had taken dozens of hits during the past 19 months, but gave way when 60 Croatian shells rained down on it yesterday.
The only bridge now connecting east and west Mostar is a rickety rope and wood plank suspension affair close to Croatian positions and within easy range of snipers. Some Croatian sources said the Stari Most was destroyed in response to a string of defeats the Bosnian army has inflicted on the HVO in central Bosnia. Croatian enclaves round Vitez and Busovaca in central Bosnia were yesterday braced for a final assault by the Bosnian army.
Alarmed by the collapse of Croatian defences round Vares, and by the loss on Saturday of Zaborje, a village guarding the approach to an explosives factory, Croats fear the worst. A Bosnian army spokesman hoped Vitez and Busovaca would fall 'before winter'. In Sarajevo, dead and wounded children littered a playground and classroom when mortars wreaked havoc on an infant school. Nine children died in the city's worst carnage since Muslims rejected the Bosnian peace plan in late September.
About 40 casualties from the school and a nearby bread queue were taken to hospital with serious shrapnel and blast wounds. Orucevic stressed the bridge had strategic importance in military terms during the war. We believed even more and managed to defend our city. We have transformed the bridge from a symbol of hatred to a symbol of peace and tolerance. People of different religions living in the city before the war established close relations again with each other," said Orucevic.
Zlatko Serdarevic, a journalist who worked at Radio Mostar during the war, said the bridge of Mostar should never be forgotten to avoid similar events in the future.
Croatian journalist Zoran Kresic stressed that the collapse of the bridge is the culmination of the war in Bosnia, and its restoration is proof that life defeats death, violence and all wars. Architect Maja Popovac from Mostar pointed out that she heard of the collapse of the bridge when she was studying in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic.
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