Lack of Arrests Undercuts Tribunal

Things might seem to be going Graham Blewitt’s way.

After two years on the job, the man who set up the prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia here can chart progress:

* Fifty-three suspected war criminals formally indicted, including a senior Bosnian Serb commander charged Friday for his role in the indiscriminate shelling of civilians during the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

* A commitment in last year’s Dayton, Ohio, peace accord binding the warring parties to cooperate with his team.

* New help promised by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peace implementation force, known as IFOR, in the Balkans.

* And even a further pledge--made last month at a Rome meeting--from Bosnian Croat, Serb and Muslim leaders guaranteeing war crimes investigators access to mass graves in Bosnia-Herzegovina, as well as to any person they wish to talk to.

But one big, growing problem overshadows all of this: a disturbing lack of arrests. It is a problem that threatens the U.N. tribunal’s credibility and its longer-term effectiveness.

Despite the impressive-sounding vows of support, prosecutors have so far been able to lay hands on only two of 53 people indicted--a Bosnian Serb named Dusan Tadic, arrested in Germany two years ago, and Bosnian Serb Gen. Djordje Djukic, whom the tribunal had barely heard of before he and a second Serbian officer fell into Bosnian government hands under mysterious circumstances four weeks ago.

Tadic, charged with crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Convention and violations of the rules and customs of war, is scheduled to go on trial May 7. The first preliminary hearing in the Djukic case is scheduled for Monday.

For Blewitt, the tribunal’s deputy prosecutor, and others struggling to bring the named suspects to justice, the dearth of arrests is worrisome.

“The fact it isn’t happening is causing all sorts of problems,” he acknowledged in a recent interview here.

It also has not helped the tribunal’s image that NATO troops have reportedly encountered the most prominent of the 53 so far indicted--Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic--but made no attempt to detain him.

Blewitt, an Australian lawyer who tracked evidence of Nazi war criminals in his own country for six years before being appointed to the tribunal, claims that the lack of progress in arresting any of the remaining Bosnian Serb suspects has eroded whatever incentive Croatian authorities might have had to deliver any of the seven indicted Croats.

“The other parties are saying, ‘Why should we cooperate with you when the Serbs are not? Why should we surrender our people to your process when the real aggressors are getting away with it?’ ” he said.

Blewitt said he fears that the absence of arrests and trials could erode global support for the tribunal--and, with it, the United Nations’ political will to continue funding the investigative body, whose budget has quadrupled to $40 million since 1994.

“I don’t know what their attitude is, but the fact we’re not having many trials or many people arrested as a result of indictments must be raising questions [at U.N. headquarters] in New York whether the funds they are putting in are worth it,” he said. “If we could start arresting the people we’ve indicted and the trials can start, then I think everything else will fall into place after that.”

To create a semblance of movement, the tribunal has twice fallen back on a provision, known as Rule 61, that invites prosecutors to present war crimes evidence at a public hearing without suspects present. While such hearings are said to help victims and witnesses tell their stories in open court, tribunal sources admit that they are used only if prosecutors believe that the chances of arresting a suspect are poor.

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Just why the chances of arresting those indicted on war crimes charges remain so dismal reflects, at least in part, the distance between word and deed in the Balkans, even when the word is presidential.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman, both signed the Dayton accord, requiring them to cooperate in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes; they expanded that commitment in Rome last month. But concrete steps have been painfully slow.

After refusing even to recognize the tribunal, Milosevic eventually authorized the opening of a tribunal office in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. But no visa has been issued to the tribunal officer assigned there. After two years of prodding, Tudjman has finally begun the process of amending the Croatian constitutional provision that he claims has prevented him from extraditing the seven Croatian suspects; it is also slow going at The Hague.

Although the constitutional amendment was to have been passed into law by the end of February, it remains bogged in Croatian parliamentary procedure. And only days after the tribunal indicted Tihofil Blaskie, a senior Bosnian Croat officer, on charges that included crimes against humanity, Tudjman promoted the officer to the post of inspector general of the Croatian army.

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Some argue that the tribunal’s own ineptitude has contributed to its problems. For example, it has made little effort to get out its message in Sarajevo, where the world’s media have gathered to document implementation of the Dayton accord.

Other international agencies working in Bosnia--including the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross--often attend IFOR media briefings to get the word out about their work and to raise a fuss when things don’t go their way.

The U.N. tribunal has often had an investigator in Sarajevo, but he is not authorized to speak for the tribunal and rarely returns phone calls from news organizations.

The problem became particularly acute several weeks ago when the two Bosnian Serb military commanders, arrested by the Bosnian government, were transported from Sarajevo to The Hague under cover of darkness. Bosnian Serb officials claimed that the men had been kidnapped, an allegation that still resonates among Bosnian Serbs.

No one from the tribunal was available in the Bosnian capital to dispute the allegation--nor has anyone from the tribunal traveled to Sarajevo to explain the court’s decision to extradite the men.

Such actions are likely to make a planned trip to Bosnia later this month by a senior tribunal delegation more of a credibility-repair exercise than a much-hoped-for building of new trust.

Despite the difficulties, Blewitt is sure that a breakthrough will come.

“Things just don’t happen overnight in this region,” he said. “I see a gradual change. If we weren’t there, the picture would be a great deal bleaker than it is.”

Times staff writer Dean E. Murphy in Sarajevo contributed to this report.