McLellan Letter 20 31-May-1999 War crimes prosecutions in 2050

Anne McLellan Letter 20 31-May-1999 War crimes prosecutions in 2050

"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." � Michael Mandel

May 31, 1999

The Honourable Anne McLellan, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
Room 360, Justice Building
239 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0H8

E-mail: [email protected]

Anne McLellan:

I bring to your attention the following letter to the editor of the National Post:

Monday, May 31, 1999
LETTERS

National Post

Coward's war

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).

The above letter originally appeared online at:
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary.asp?s2=letters&f=990531/2661624.html
Email the National Post at: [email protected]

And I remind you once again that you have turned your war crimes unit largely into an immigration infractions unit which, moreover, concentrates on conjectured immigration infractions committed by non-Jewish East Europeans more than half a century ago, and whose participation in the war on the Axis side was under great duress and at the very bottom of the chain of command, and where that participation cannot be documented to have included the commission of any crimes. The focus of the formal complaints to the International Criminal Tribunal described by Michael Mandel above, in sharp contrast, address themselves to blood that is being shed today, and place the blame at the very top of the chain of command.

If the Canadian war crimes unit were to act consistently, then it would open files on the thousands of NATO personnel who are today involved at the lowest levels in the current NATO bombing of Yugoslavia so that around the year 2050, it could initiate prosecutions for immigration infractions against any who had subsequently settled in Canada. Which former NATO personnel the Canadian war crimes unit would actually prosecute would depend on which nationalities had become targeted by special interest groups that happened to be in control of the Department of Justice at that time.

In case the Canadian war crimes unit ever decides to turn its attention to something worthier than conjectured, half-century old immigration infractions, and in case it decides to prosecute war crimes committed by Canadians themselves, and in case it decides to act sooner than after the passage of half a century, and in case it decides to prosecute those who instigated bloodshed from the top of the chain of command and not conscripts who served in some unknown capacity at the bottom of the chain of command � then as Jean Chretien, Lloyd Axworthy, and Art Eggleton all meet these criteria, and as they have all been named in the above-mentioned complaints and are all currently under investigation by the International Criminal Tribunal, then it might be advisable for your war crimes unit to open files on them at this time.

Lubomyr Prytulak

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