05 September 2008
Law Student Gets Firsthand Look at Human Rights Justice, September 5, 2008(Law school programs offer chance to work at international criminal tribunal)
By Jane Morse
Staff Writer
Washington — For students of human rights law, few opportunities can compare to an internship working at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague in the Netherlands.
Maureen Abboud, who recently graduated from the Penn State–Dickenson School of Law, spent a semester in 2007 as an intern with the United Nations at the ICTY.
The experience, she told America.gov, provided her with “a unique view of the various mechanics of international criminal justice.”
The ICTY, as well as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), Abboud said, are “a clear demonstration that the world will no longer tolerate injustice or violence; rather, it will be prosecuted and individuals will be held accountable.”
Abboud was only the second student from her law school — one of the oldest law schools in the United States — to participate in the ICTY internship program.
One of Abboud’s professors, Dermot Groome, was the senior prosecutor on the Slobodan Milosevic case at the ICTY and helped set up the ICTY internship for the Dickenson law school.
At ICTY, Abboud met American law students from Boston College and the University of California-Los Angeles as well as students from law schools the world over. “I think that all the students were really excited to be there and really interested in helping to end impunity,” she said.
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
Established by the United Nations in 1993, the ICTY prosecutes serious crimes committed during the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia.
The ICTY seeks to verify important elements of historical records of the conflicts, hold accountable senior leaders responsible for crimes and bring justice for thousands of victims.
So far, more than 3,500 witnesses have testified in court, adding to the historical record. The ICTY prosecutor made legal history in 2001 by filing an indictment against an acting head of state – Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic, the first president of Serbia and later the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was accused of causing the murder of hundreds of Kosovo Albanian citizens, Croats and non-Serbs, and the deaths of thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Milosevic died in custody in March 2006. (See “U.S. Reaffirms Support for Tribunal Following Milosevic's Death.”)
More recently, Radovan Karadzic was arrested and is now in the custody of the ICTY after 13 years at large. Karadzic, who was arrested in July, is the former leader of Bosnian Serbs.
He is charged with the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from large areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is also charged with the genocide committed in Srebrenica in July 1995 when an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed. (See “White House Hails Arrest of Radovan Karadzic.”)
INTERN’S MEANINGFUL WORK
During her internship at the ICTY from August through December 2007, Abboud assisted with the case of Popovic et al.
Vujadin Popovic was a lieutenant colonel and assistant commander of security on the staff of the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS). He and six of his associates are charged by the ICTY with genocide with the intent to destroy Bosnian Muslims.
Abboud’s internship, she reported, involved researching motions, compiling binders of evidence and exhibits to be submitted to the tribunal, reviewing documents to be used at the trial and assisting in witness preparation. “I pretty much did anything that the prosecutors needed at that moment or that arose in trial that day,” she said.
“The most interesting and exciting work I did while with the United Nations at the ICTY was with Dean Manning, an exhumation expert who was an investigator with the ICTY,” Abboud said. Manning, an Australian, primarily was involved with the exhumation of mass graves in and around Srebrenica.
“Through his work and the work of the investigators at the ICTY, they were able to provide evidence of date and cause of death, identity of victims, evidence obtained that linked execution sites to mass graves, as well as evidence linking various mass graves to one another,” Abboud said.
“For example,” Abboud said, “through DNA testing and a collaboration between the ICTY and the ICMP [International Commission on Missing Persons], investigators were able to link primary and secondary graves together. In other words, when the Serbian army suspected that they were discovered digging and burying in mass graves known as ‘primary graves,’ they dug up graves already finished, then separated the bodies and dug new mass graves called ‘secondary graves.’”
The ICTY was able to discover this, she explained, because DNA from individual victims was found in two or three different graves. This gruesome and painstaking work involved matching DNA from body parts scattered in various graves to a single individual.
“This happened with several victims, and the ICTY was then able to link victims to execution sites and to primary and secondary mass graves,” said Abboud, who is hoping to launch a legal career involving human rights.
“Interning with the United Nations at the ICTY,” she said, “solidified my desire to continue to be involved with international law, international criminal law and international humanitarian law. It provided me with a unique view of the various mechanics of international criminal justice and how the international community’s desire to end impunity for crimes translates into the day-to-day practice of doing so.”
As the knowledge and practice of international criminal law increases, she predicted, “the world will no longer tolerate injustice or violence; rather, it will be prosecuted and individuals will be held accountable.”
