A show trial with a difference

It’s a sleepy morning in Westminster. Fleet Street is exercised by the arrival of
a new strain of e-coli in Britain and there’s also the promise of a sweltering day’s Test cricket at Lords. The Hague, by contrast, woke to the prospect of seeing Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Belgrade, arraigned before the international court. Mladic was in hospital over night, being treated for his cancer. In view of Mladic’s ailing health, the chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, shortened the list of charges to ensure that the trial is shortened. In other words, those charges that might not easily stick are to be dropped so that sentence can be passed quickly. The same expeditious ruse was used during the trial of Radovan Karadzic.

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Sean Thomas

Good riddance to literary fiction

There are some who will be unnerved by the prosecutor’s move, which suggests that judgment has already been passed on Mladic and that this is no more than a pious show trial.