Thursday, March 24, 2016

The Price of a Life in Europe

21 years after being charged, eleven years as a fugitive then a five year trial followed by eighteen months for the judges to deliberate on the verdict, today the International Criminal Court in the Hague convicted Radovon Karadžić of Genocide and directly ordering the murder of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica.

The court promptly sentenced him to 1.8 days in jail... for each victim.

He now has 30 days to file an appeal which lawyers expect to take between three and five years to hear and between another year and two years for the judges to adjudicate.

I personally think the definition of Genocide has has been so watered down that it is almost meaningless these days. But there is no question that the premeditated murder of 8,000 people ranks as a great war crime and atrocity.

Long time readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of capital punishment. But I have always recognized certain rare exceptions. This is one of them. In any civilized society, following such a conviction, Mr. Karadžić would have been given enough time to dictate his will and confess to a priest before being marched to the gallows.

This is a perversion of justice.

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