Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic will be the first person tried by an international war crimes tribunal since Nuremberg. Court TV's Terry Moran recently interviewed Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone about the work of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the upcoming trial and the prospects for a permanent international criminal court. Here's an excerpt of the interview.

Question
Justice Goldstone, let me begin with a political question. Now that there is a precarious peace established in Bosnia, are the war crimes trials still important? Do they help or hinder the securing of that peace?

Justice Goldstone
I have no doubt that they can only help. It's very important to individualize guilt ... to indicate that, the atrocities that were committed; that were conceived of and executed by individuals and not by a nation or a people or a religious group; and, I can think of no better way of doing that than leaving evidence establishing or attempting to establish that these things were ordered by individuals.

Question
What do you say to the argument that they merely continued to rankle at the wounds that were opened in the civil war?

Justice Goldstone
Well the wounds are there ... And it's not a question of opening wounds. They're open. And they're festering. And the only way to stop that festering is by truth and by justice and ... and it's the only way to start the healing process for victims and to avoid people demanding revenge and tacking them on to their own homes.

Question
So you don't see a conflict here between justice and peace?

Justice Goldstone
On the contrary. I think they're twins.

Question
How important is the (Dusko) Tadic trial to that goal?

Justice Goldstone
Well, I don't want to comment on the Tadic trial and it's coming before the court really very shortly. But any trials before this tribunal are important. Obviously Tadic has assumed a greater importance because at the moment, he's still the only person we've indicted who's here. So, it's important in that sense. But obviously there are more important people than Mr. Tadic who have been indicted and first prize will be to get them into the court.

Question
What if you can't? Is Tadic enough?

Justice Goldstone
Well, I'm fairly optimistic that other people are going to be appearing in court.

Question
Can you talk a little bit about Tadic? About why this indictment was brought? Just the background of the indictment.

Justice Goldstone
Well, the background to the indictment just really starts with the commission of experts under the chairmanship of Professor (Cherif) Bassiouni. I did a very complete and very useful investigation into the events in Prijeador and the death camps at Omarska, Trnopolje, in particular ... before I was here ... when Graham Blewitt was the acting Deputy Prosecutor and ... and began to assemble investigate was they decided that that's where the first investigation should begin. And one of the people who was on the list of suspects, amongst a number of other people, was Mr. Tadic.

And after the investigation began, information was sent to the tribunal ... to this office by the German authorities to say that in fact Tadic should be arrested and have been identified. And having regard to the fact that he was an important suspect in an investigation that had already begun, the conclusion wasn't difficult to reach that this was a case that should be heard by the international tribunal and not left to the national courts of Germany. And that led to the furlough application and the transfer of Mr. Tadic by the German authorities to the tribunal.

Question
Talk a little about Omarska and Prijedor and why that was such an important place to begin in the indictments.

Justice Goldstone
Well, it was important in itself because of the scale and nature of the atrocities committed and the manner in which people were tortured and the manner in which people were murdered. And the way men and women were treated in those camps. So it was important on its own merits that, in addition, as I say, the signposts were provided for us by the report of the commission of experts.

Question
What difference does it make that Tadic is not a soldier? That he wasn't a regular soldier and that he's not a member of the army that was in charge of the situation?

Justice Goldstone
Well I think it's significant. It's not relevant to his culpability. We don't draw any distinction in that regard between military and political leaders. In terms of criminal laws, people who associate themselves with the commission of offenses, one doesn't have regard to what position they hold whether it was an official one, military or political.

Question
What's the law that you use to prosecute someone like Tadic or indict some other people involving this situation? What law do you rely on?

Justice Goldstone
We use the international humanitarian law which used to be called the Law of War. It's basically a body of law that's grown up over the last century in it's modern guise, aimed at protecting innocent non-belligerence in war. Innocent civilians; prisoners of war; also under our jurisdiction ... they can charge genocide in the crimes against humanity which don't require wars to be committed. This is really the reason why it's been renamed into National Humanitarian Law because it's really a coalition of aspects of a human rights law ... an aspect of genocide and crimes against humanity which are both an off-growth of Nazi atrocities of the second world war. And what preceded that which was the law of the Hague Convention ... the Geneva Convention ... which was more classically the law of war, but those are the laws which have been given to us by the security council as the basis of our jurisdiction.

Question
Is that jurisdiction inescapably political?

Justice Goldstone
No not at all ... I certainly don't see them as being political. They clearly have a political fallout. And that's inevitable when one's dealing in the sort of context in which we're dealing where nations and people have been at war. But I suppose even in a national situation, many trials are political in the sense that they have a political effect ... on ... the impeachment of a president is a legal proceeding. I don't think it's political in the sense that the decisions are not politically motivated. The decisions are not driven by political considerations. There's no political agenda. But it's obvious to a prosecutor in that situation that if you impeach the president, it's going to have tremendous political consequences, but that's no reason why it shouldn't be done. And no reason in any way impugn the process of being political.

Question
So how much has the political fallout affected your work here?

Justice Goldstone

Well, it hasn't affected any decisions we've taken. It hasn't affected who we investigate. It hasn't affected who we indict. It hasn't affected the timing of indictments.

We've done our work consciously and we have applied professional standards. We've tried to be as even-handed and unbiased and unprejudiced as it's possible to be. But obviously the perceptions are based on the order in which things happen. They started indicting Bosnian Serbs and we were accused of being anti-Serb. Had the first indictments been against Bosnian Muslims ... then I don't doubt we would have been accused of being anti-Muslim. When we started indicting Croats, we in some quarters in Croatia and the Croatian parts of Bosnia, the accusation was made that we'd suddenly become anti-Croat. So, it's one of the facts of life that one has to live with, but I think one has to be steadfast, and one has to go ahead and do the work to the best of our ability and hope that sensible, reasonable people will judge us at the end and not at the beginning or the middle of our work.

Question

What would you say then to Bosnian Serbs or Croats or Muslims who see a compatriot brought here like Tadic and put on trial? When they say he won't get a fair trial here, how can you assure then that he would?

Justice Goldstone

Well, the only way we can assure them is by seeing ... is by showing them and that's the important ground, I think, that you and the other media play. The only way to establish a fair trial is to have on. People won't accept words ... people want deeds and that's fair enough.

Question
Does he (Tadic) start at an automatic disadvantage though because he's the first defendant here? I mean, does that present special problems for the fairness of the Tadic trial?

Justice Goldstone
I wouldn't have thought so. I think, if anything, the contrary. I think the first trial is ... we're going to be feeling our way. The judges are going to be feeling their way. I think this is an unusual prosecutor's office in comparison to national prosecutor's offices and that we really are concerned to the fairness of the trial, certainly as much as the defense lawyers are.

We just cannot afford any of our proceedings to be judged by any of these people as being unfair. And we're going to be ... and that judgement is going to be made ... from many perspectives. Although it's an adversarial type of crime, it's fairness is going to be judged by nations and by lawyers and by commentators from countries who are not used to that form of proceedings. All the more reason that it's going to be very important to explain what we're doing and why are we doing it. And I have little doubt that the judges are going to feel equally obliged to be open and as forthcoming as possible in the decisions that are made.

Question
How about resources. Is there an imbalance of resources between your office and the United Nations and an individual defendant in this system?

Justice Goldstone

I certainly hope not. And we've certainly applied as much press as we can and successfully to ensure, for example, that Mr. Tadic's legal team is adequately resourced. Again, we can't afford unfairness to arise because of lack of resources. That would be a real unfairness. It's one of the justifiable criticisms of Nuremberg. And it would be very, very serious to the whole credibility of this process and to the future enforcement of international humanitarian law if there was a justified perception that accused people are being dealt with unfairly.

The whole thrust of the rules which the judges so painstakingly wrote for the tribunal has been predicated on equality. And the rules don't in any way favor the prosecutor. When it comes to discovery, disclosure of documents, disclosure of information, the whole thrust of the rules is to ensure equal treatment of defense and prosecutor.

Question

You mentioned Nuremeberg. Another criticism of Nuremberg was the quality of defense counsel. Are you confident in the confidence of defense counsel in the tribunal here?

Justice Goldstone

Yes, certainly in the cases that have so far come to the tribunal. There've been first-class lawyers appearing for the defense. And I don't want to talk about personalities. But it's something obviously we cannot control. And when I say we, I'm talking about the tribunal generally because to defend accused people ... defendants must be entitled to choose lawyers that they wish to choose. And if they choose the best, well they're going to get ... if they decide for any reason to choose less than the best, that's their privilege. That they shouldn't be saddled with second best because of lack of resources ... that's the least that the tribunal and the United Nations must ensure.

Question
The Nuremberg prosecutors relied primarily on documents to prove their cases. Your going to rely on witnesses. Compare that strategy a little bit?

Justice Goldstone
Well, it's not a choice. I think if prosecutors have guilt established in documents, above the signature of the defendants, obviously, it's more than any other prosecutor can do resist doing that. It means that trials can be bought quickly, can be short. On the other hand, the disadvantages ... there isn't the human element in it. You don't have witnesses, victims coming to court to the same extent and saying what happened and especially, you bear ... bear in mind that Nuremberg ... we're dealing with massive crimes involving many people. So there are advantages and disadvantages as in most important things in both those scenarios.

Question
Well, why is it important to have ... if you have the papers, which, as you point out, you don't, but why is it important to have the voice of the victims?

Justice Goldstone
Because people relate to individual stories. People don't relate to statistics, to generalizations. People can only relate and feel when they hear somebody that they can identify with telling what happened to them. That's something that any human being can relate to. And if you want to make an impression, if we're going to have any deterrent effect, that sort of impression that needs to be made.

Question
So one of the aims of the tribunal is to affect public opinion?

Justice Goldstone
That's the aim of any criminal justice system to ... to deter people from committing offenses.

Question
There may be another disadvantage that a defendant is at in a situation like the Tadic situation. His witnesses are still in Bosnia, for the most part. And the prosecution's witnesses available are because they're refugees. How about that situation?

Justice Goldstone
Well it shouldn't be a difficulty because one would imagine that the sort of witnesses who... somebody in the defendant's position would want to call will have the cooperation of local populations. In fact, it hasn't worked out quite that way in the case of Tadic because there's been a lack of cooperation or there has been, until recently, on the part of the Bosnian Serbs in giving his team access to witnesses, but I'm hopeful that that is being corrected.

But witnesses are witnesses and, it will be to the prosecutor's disadvantage in the end if, for reasons beyond the control of a defendant, witnesses aren't available. If witnesses aren't available and there are witnesses in existence who can't be brought, any doubts that are created by the absence of the witness is going to make it more difficult for the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Question
Is it conceivable that in the first war crimes prosecution since the end of the second world war ... there would be an acquittal?

Justice Goldstone
Of course, that's conceivable. If there's an acquittal, it'll be only for one reason and that is because the prosecution hasn't proved its case. And if it hasn't proved it's case, then there should be an acquittal and certainly that's the way it should go.

Question
You don't think there would be tremendous political pressure and the prestige of the international humanitarian law project to convict the first defendant?

Justice Goldstone
I don't look at it like that at all. I think that the purpose of this whole proceeding of the tribunal is to establish the truth. And there's a criminal standard which is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and I wouldn't regard it as a failure at all if there was an acquittal. It would mean the system is working.

Question
How about the precedent that your work here and that the tribunal has or may have for the establishment of a permanent international criminal court. Is that a good idea?

Justice Goldstone
Well, there's clearly a direct relationship to the extent that this process is considered by the international community broadly speaking as being worth it. Being successful or partially successful ... to the extent that it may be considered a failure or a partial failure is obviously going to influence decisions that nations are going to take with regard to setting up a permanent court.

Question
There are five cameras in that courtroom. You touched on this a little earlier, and I wanted just to sound you out on it. Five cameras in the courtroom where the trials will take place. Why?

Justice Goldstone
Well I have no doubt that in any country and though this ... in an international court, the media is a partner in the whole criminal justice system. If people in the country are not told what their criminal courts are doing, then there's certain to be the deterrent aspect of criminal justice is going to fail. It's just not going to be there.

And in earlier days, public trials were held ... executions were held in public. People who were found guilty were flogged in public. And the reasons for that being done ... punishments have to get round by word of mouth.

Today, fortunately, in my view for the criminal justice system, we have television; we have newspapers; we have radio. And people are told ... if the international community isn't told what we're doing here, and particularly if people in the countries where they are victims don't know what we're doing, there's no point in doing what we're doing.

Question
Let me ask about your pending departure (in October) here. Do you feel that to some degree, your work is done?

Justice Goldstone
Well, clearly the work of the prosecutor won't be done as long as the tribunal continues to function. So the prosecutor's work isn't done. And I feel, and ... that may well be, talking myself into a position if you like, but I feel that the first phase of the tribunals for both Yugoslavia and Rwanda is coming to an end and that's the start for the offices ... setting a strategy for the prosecutor's office ... getting the rules working and the beginning of the trials.

Question
Much of the media and a lot of people have focused on the Bosnian war crimes tribunal. The Rwandan war crimes tribunal is starting up as well. Compare the two in importance, in significance.

Justice Goldstone

I think one must be careful not to be too myopic in a way. If one judges the question of interest from the press in most African countries, you will find that a lot more interest has been displayed in the Rwanda tribunal than in the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. But that's saying the obvious. Often the obvious is missed because of one's perspective.

Having said that, the Rwanda tribunal is certainly, in my view, as important as the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It's no less important for the victims, for international justice. I think it's particularly important in demonstrating that these sorts of atrocities can happen anywhere ... and on any continent, in any country, given the circumstances. I think it demonstrates in both areas and in others that haven't been covered unfortunately in my view by international tribunals.

The power of leadership and ... and how in my opinion, leadership is a tremendously powerful tool and can be used for good or evil. And what we're dealing with is are atrocities committed for political reasons by political leaders ... instigated by political leaders at various levels and the fact that one has a similar situation in Rwanda is I think a very important lesson for the whole of the international community.

Question

And do you think it possible that if these tribunals succeed, such a leader would actually think twice before launching a genocidal project?

Justice Goldstone

I think the probabilities are overwhelming that that's true. No criminal conduct in any national state and it's no different in ... again, in the international community ... no criminal conduct can be stopped without a criminal justice system ... without good policing and importantly without law enforcement. If you don't have law enforcement, your crime rate's going to soar.

In any national state and in the international community, if people ... if people know ... people in leadership positions, particularly, know that there's a court there ... that there's an international prosecutor and that the international community is going to act as an international police force, in respect of international war crimes, I just cannot believe that people aren't going to think twice as to consequences. Until now, they haven't had to. There's just been no enforcement mechanism at all.

Question

Have you ever thought you're tilting at windmills in a way to try to establish this?

Justice Goldstone
No, not at all because I think there's so many important aspects of this ... the fact that victims in Rwanda ... victims in the former Yugoslavia know that they haven't been ignored by the international community itself.

There's no forgetting quickly by the international community and brushing it under the rug. The educational aspect ... the fact that we're talking to each other about international war crimes would not remotely have happened without these tribunals being set up. The fact that the law of war in international humanitarian law is being taught and discussed at seminars and in classrooms ... to universities and probably in the majority of the countries of the world, things that wouldn't have happened but for these tribunals being set up. The fact that the whole debate on a permanent court is being taken up and is being taken more seriously and none of these things would have happened without this really brave action by the Security Council in setting up the two tribunals.

Question
All right. Justice Goldstone thank you.

Justice Goldstone
Pleasure.