Letters:

Coward's War

by Michael Mandel

Re: Arbour Indicts Milosevic for Kosovo War Crimes, May 27.

YOUR extensive front-page coverage of the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia made no mention of the fact that all of the NATO leaders, from Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen, Javier Solana and Jamie Shea, to Jean Chretien, Lloyd Axworthy and Art Eggleton, are also under active investigation by the tribunal's prosecutors.

Charges of war crimes for the illegal and cowardly war being fought by NATO against the civilian population of Yugoslavia have been made in three separate formal complaints to Judge Louise Arbour by legal experts from Canada, Argentina, the United States, Nicaragua, Switzerland, Greece and Britain.

More than 1,000 people from around the world have joined in the charges against NATO that include the most serious within the tribunal's jurisdiction: wilful killing and wilfully causing great suffering and serious injury to thousands of civilians; the employment of poisonous weapons and other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering; the unlawful and wanton destruction of tens of billions of dollars worth of property, cities, towns and villages not justified by military necessity; and the bombardment of undefended dwellings and buildings, including hospitals, schools, factories and generating plants.

Since these NATO leaders have all publicly admitted the essential elements of their crimes, Judge Arbour's indictments of them cannot be far behind those she has just laid against Mr. Milosevic.

Michael Mandel, professor,
Osgoode Hall Law School,
York University, Toronto.

The writer is one of the petitioners in Re: William J. Clinton et al., filed May 6, 1999, with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Our opinion

  WE share these sentiments wholeheartedly, and are again pleased that a Canadian national newspaper has published the professor's letter.