International Law & Criminal Tribunal Experience - Serbian Lawyer
I travelled to The Hague in late December 2002 to intern at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”) during my final semester of law school. During that time I also attended classes at Leiden University to complete my legal education. I took classes such as Comparative Criminal Procedure, comparing numerous jurisdictions around the world, and European Union Law. Leiden is a 15-minute train ride from The Hague and it is another 30-minute walk from the Leiden train station to Leiden University.
The ICTY is located in the old headquarters building of a Dutch insurance company, which was retrofitted to accommodate the transportation and detention of prisoners, three trial chambers, administrative offices of the Tribunal Registry, prosecutor offices, a law library and a small working area for defense attorneys. The ICTY is near the International Court and the International Criminal Court. The Tribunal is a 5-minute drive from Scheveningen, a beach resort town that is the location of the ICTY Detention Unit, located inside of a Dutch prison facility, which serves as the central detention facility for ICTY defendants.
The Tribunal was established by the United Nations in May 1993 to prosecute war crimes committed during the Balkan wars in the 1990’s. The ICTY is the first war crimes tribunal created by the UN Security Council in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter and the first international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. However, unlike the ICTY, the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals were established by treaty. The ICTY is made up of 3 trial chambers, which are contained in a secure area protected by 5-inch thick explosion-proof glass. Trials are open to the public, which can view the trials from galleries located on the other side of the protective glass, but access to the trial chambers is restricted. There are usually 6 trials going at any one time. Each trial chamber tries one case in the morning and another in the afternoon, which is one of the reasons that trials are excruciatingly long.
I was chosen to intern at the ICTY because Serbian or Serbo-Croatian as it was commonly called before the Balkan wars, is my first language. I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to a Serbian mother and an American father. My parents divorced shortly after I was born so I went to live with my grandparents in Zemun, a suburb of Belgrade on the other side of the Sava and Danube rivers. My grandmother taught me to read Cyrillic by reading street signs wherever we went. Cyrillic is the main alphabet in Serbia whereas Croatians use Latin text. I came back to the States to start school when I was 5 years old. I did not speak English when I started school but, like most kids, I picked it up quickly. Over the years I maintained my fluency in Serbian speaking it around the house to my mother, grandparents, aunt and uncle.
At The Hague I interned with John Ackerman, a brilliant lawyer and former Harris County Criminal District Court judge who literally wrote the book on practicing before the Tribunal (Practice and Procedure of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, by John E. Ackerman). John represented Radoslav Brdjanin, president of the ARK (Autonomous Region of Krajina) Crisis Staff. The Autonomous Region of Krajina, a part of the Republic of Serbia, which was carved out of the northern tip of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The ARK Crisis Staff was formed along with other Crisis groups allegedly to coordinate and execute an ethnic cleansing plan and to take over the administration of the regions and the municipalities. The ARK Crisis Staff was established on May 5, 1992 and Radoslav Brdjanin was selected as its President. Brdjanin was charged with Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and numerous other counts. The prosecution amassed numerous documents during its investigation, copies of which were then tendered to the defense through the discovery process. When I left The Hague, we had somewhere around 44,000 documents. A document could be anything from a one-page document to a several-hundred page war diary. My job was to review new discovery documents to see if any of them pertained to Brdjanin or mentioned him in any way. I read hundreds of newspaper articles, military officer war diaries, transcripts of wiretapped conversations between numerous persons of interest, including conversations between Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic. I also did research, wrote memorandums and reviewed trial transcripts. The highlight of my time at the ICTY was the 5 days I sat side-by-side with John Ackerman inside the trial chamber during trial. Each trial was translated into English, “Bosnian” and French. The transcripts were typed live in English and French and could be viewed real time on monitors at counsel table. My job was to listen to the witness, read the transcribed testimony in English and listen to the “Bosnian” translation to ensure that the witness’ testimony was being accurately translated. Needless to say, incorrect turns of phrase could have a devastating affect for the accused. I also had the privilege of assisting John Ackerman in client conferences during trial breaks in the prisoner holdover area behind the trial chamber. I was told that I was the first defense intern ever allowed in the trial chamber at the time.
When I left The Hague, I went to Banja Luka, the capital of the Republic of Serbia, for three weeks as a representative of the ABA – CEELI program (American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative) to the law school at Banja Luka. I met with law students and answered their questions about the differences in our respective legal systems as well as the ICTY. I also met with law professors and observed various classes and lectures.
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