The Hague, June 17: Blagejovic enters in the presence of two burly, but unarmed, UN guards, one of whom sits next to him. Like all of the DRINA Corps senior officers, he was a career officer in the Yugoslav National Army before the war. Today, he’s dressed in a plain dark blue suit, with a blue shirt and a black tie. He has a moustache, and he speaks with a raspy, confident voice. The television cameras catch him from above and show thin wisps of hair that have been carefully combed across a balding head.

Behind bars: Radislav Krstic,
commander of the DRINA
Corps of the Bosnian Serb
Army, oversaw the Srebrenica
massacre. He has been
sentenced by the Hague
tribunal to 35 years in jail.

Blagejovic looks ordinary in civilian clothes, but it also doesn’t take much to imagine him in uniform. It’s hard to tell whether he would have been more comfortable giving or taking orders. I’m looking for some distinguishing feature, but Blagejovic does not cooperate. At least not at once.

This case may lack the theater of the Milosevic trial, but it has its own bizarre aspects. Blagejovic was arrested by NATO troops on August 10, 2001, but for the last year he’s refused to speak to his lawyer, an American named Michael Carnavas. A year ago, Carnavas startled everyone by announcing that Blagejovic had tried to bribe him by demanding some of Carnavas’s hefty defense budget in return for cooperating. Carnavas denounced it immediately and earned Blagejovic’s undying hostility.

Carnavas was appointed by the Tribunal registrar, and it’s a mystery why he hasn’t been replaced, given that he never speaks to his client. Carnavas has done his best to mount a defense, and called witnesses. His argument is that Blagejovic (who was appointed shortly before the massacre) could not have known of the killings, which were being orchestrated by special forces from outside the DRINA Corps and paramilitaries like Milan Lukic, been drafted in from other regions.

Carnavas himself is not popular around here. People say he throws his arms about, abuses the prosecution and acts like everyone’s worst stereotype of an American attorney. But today he looks subdued. Perhaps it’s because he is being quietly and effectively rebuked by the chief prosecuting attorney, Peter McLoskey for giving two interviews to thre Serbian press. McLoskey (the son of the late US Congressman) refers with regret to the articles (“although of course we take the media with a grain of salt”). Having talked to his “distinguished colleague”, McLoskey is able to assure the judges that there will be no more such “unfortunate” leaks.

Blagejovic wants to tell his side of the story, and he’d better get moving because his trial is due to wind up by July 30. The purpose of this hearing is to consider the request. Judge Liu Daqun, from China, warns Blagejovic that if he testifies under oath, he could well incriminate himself, but that if he just gives a “solemn statement” which is not subject to cross-examination, it won’t carry the same weight. Given this, intones Lui, the court recommends that Blagejovic had better talk to his lawyer.

Suddenly Blagejovic comes alive. He bristles with anger: “Whatever you do, don’t force me to meet with Carnavas. I don’t want to meet with him, ever!” Lawyer Carnavas is not having a good day. First he gets a public dressing-down for speaking to the press, now his client is giving him the cold shoulder.

Judge Liu looks impassive, and announces a recess. People pick up papers and start looking forward to the weekend. Blagejovic is escorted out by UN guards. Soon he’ll be back in the Tribunal detention center in Scheveningen, near the sea, where rumor has it he and the other Serbs happily consort with the Muslim and Croat detainees.

I struggle to make a connection between what I’ve just seen and the massacre at Srebrenica. It’s certainly harder than it was at the ICMP identification center in Tuzla. Seeing Blagejovic behind a glass panel certainly doesn’t have the same impact as the skeleton of one of his 15 year-old victims.

But the real contrast lies in this strange legal proceeding. It has moved at half speed, in disconnected exchanges. Judge Lui’s ponderous and awkward English slowed it down further. “I …..must …lemind you that under article 84 bis…..” Nothing could be further from the swift downward slash of the knife, the hammering guns, the speed with which life was snuffed out in the July 1995 massacre.

The Tribunal’s process may be ponderous, but it has been accepted universally and will admit to no deviations. This is what gives it credibility, and the right to pass judgment on acts of total deviance, like Srebrenica. I also appreciate the irony of a judge from Communist China gently reminding this Serb butcher, who helped to kill over 7,000 humans without a thought for their rights, that he has a right not to incriminate himself.

But none of the widows from Srebrenica are present to relish the irony. Even if they were, they would surely find it hard to understand why the real concern is that Blagejovic won’t get a fair trial because he refuses to talk to his lawyer. That is hardly the sort of justice that will soften the edges of their anger and pain.