The functioning of the ICTY

Who?

The first thing we can wonder about the functioning of the ICTY is who is tried by the tribunal?
Only the important leaders and the main responsibles are judged in The Hague. The smaller subordinates are judged in local tribunals in the former Yugoslavia.

Until now, the tribunal has indicted 161 persons for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the former Yugoslavia.

86 cases are concluded with 121 accused in all. Some accused were acquitted. The others were sentenced from some year’s imprisonment to life imprisonment. The ICTY has not the right to sentence somebody to death. After their trial, the sentenced people are sent to jail in different countries which have an agreement with the ICTY.
Today, 17 cases are ongoing with 40 accused in all. Among the ongoing proceedings, 2 accused have not yet been arrested. I’m going to give more explanation about this two people later.
So now we come to the functioning itself of the tribunal.

The closure of the tribunal

The ICTY is an ad hoc court and will not stay open indefinitely. The Security Council asked the tribunal to finish his work as fast as possible because the cost of such a court is very high and only few important people have still to be judged.
All trials are expected to be completed by mid-2011, with the exception of that of Radovan Karadzic, which is expected to finish in 2012. We are going to go back over the case of Radovan Karadzic later in the presentation.
Others criminals will be judged by local jurisdictions. In order to make these local jurisdictions able to try fairly/equitably the accused, the ICTY has worked closely with local courts since 2003. This partnership is a part of a continuing effort to see justice served.

But the closure of the tribunal includes one exception. As I said earlier, there are two remaining fugitives, Mladic and Hadzic. (You can see their pictures on the ppt) They are indicted by the