WALTER ROCKLER
Rockler, a Washington lawyer and a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, said: “For some to shout ‘war criminal’ at Milosevic only emphasizes that those who live in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones. The Nuremberg Court found that to initiate a war of aggression, as the U.S. has done against Yugoslavia, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime.”
GLEN RANGWALA
Today, the Movement for the Advancement of International Criminal Law hands a 40-page dossier to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague charging Prime Minister Tony Blair and other British officials with serious violations of international humanitarian law in Yugoslavia. Rangwala, an international lawyer at Trinity College, Cambridge University, is the main author of the dossier. Today, he said: “Unlike almost every previous conflict, the current war in Yugoslavia is marked by the presence of judicial institutions which can prosecute criminals on every side. There is now overwhelming evidence that NATO is consciously violating cardinal principles of humanitarian law.”
ANN FAGAN GINGER
Professor of Peace Law and Human Rights at San Francisco State University, Ginger said: “Women and children are always the major victims in war. The U.S. has not ratified treaties protecting women and children. The bombing in Yugoslavia violates these treaties, the UN Charter and the most basic international law.”
JOHN QUIGLEY
Professor of Law, Ohio State University, and editor of the forthcoming Genocide in Cambodia, Quigley said: “The targeting of broadcast stations, electrical facilities and various factories, all of which have a primarily civilian purpose, is not legitimate.”
ROBERT HAYDEN
Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hayden said: “When questioned about NATO liability for war crimes, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that ‘NATO is the friend of the Tribunal… NATO countries are those that have provided the finances to set up the Tribunal, we are among the majority financiers.’ Mr. Shea clearly knows that he who pays the piper calls the tune.”
JOHN BURROUGHS
Executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, Burroughs said: “The law of armed conflict mandates that military action bear a proportionate relationship to the achievement of concrete military advantage. But the bombing of Yugoslavia is about punishing a society and a regime.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
