Cathrin Schütz interviews Canadian lawyer Tiphaine Dickson
"Q: Late Sunday, the President of the ICTY, Theodor Meron, announced the resignation of Richard May of the United Kingdom, the presiding judge in the Milosevic trial. Officially, the resignation is due to the ill health of judge May. What was your first take on these developments?
Tiphaine Dickson: This is a spectacular development-- only days before the end of the presentation of the prosecution's evidence-- which has gone on for two years already. This resignation demonstrates that the length and complexity of this process, not to mention the hundreds of witnesses, 30,000 pages of transcripts, 500 videotapes, hundreds of audiotapes, and huge quantity of other exhibits cannot be adequately handled, let alone be meaningfully understood, by a person in ill health. It is unfortunate that Slobodan Milosevic-- whose health concerns similarly reduce his capacity properly to analyse and challenge the voluminous record generated so far-- has not been treated with the same deference accorded to Richard May. Much has been made in the mainstream press about President Milosevic's illness "wasting the court's time", yet Richard May's undisclosed health problems are not treated with contempt, but rather with compassion and concern. Slobodan Milosevic cannot resign from the ICTY for health reasons, and on the contrary, he has confronted this process while struggling against a life-threatening illness, despite being denied provisional release or specialized medical care to treat his condition.
Q: In recent days, the international press reported that the genocide charge has not been proven.
Dickson: The press' assessment of the quality of evidence presented so far is accurate to the extent that the evidence presented by the ICTY prosecutor has been anemic, rife with hearsay, opinion, speculation and irrelevancies. It is evident that counts should be dismissed, and in my opinion, the prosecutor has not succeeded in presenting a coherent or compelling case, in accordance with the standards of criminal justice."
more:
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/DIC402A.htmlHello from Germany,
Dirk