Talk:Trial of Slobodan Milošević

References to the Karadzic judgement

I thought I'd raise this issue here so that others can give their opinion, since otherwise the only discussion is on the Admin noticeboard. I made changes to remove references to the Karadzic trial that have since been reverted, and I then noticed that this has been an ongoing issue, recently involving User:JamesJohnson2 and User:Philip Cross.

The issue is whether Milosevic's supposed exoneration by the ICTY (which is supposed to follow from the ICTY's judgement in the case of Radovan Karadzic) should be mentioned in this article.

The key text is from http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf (page 1303), as follows:

"based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milošević’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership,11027 the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan."

My view is that that:

• The Karadzic trial is not the Milosevic trial. The page "Trial of Slobodan Milosevic" should focus on information about his trial. The purpose of the article is not to discuss whether Milosevic was or was not guilty of the crimes.

• Concluding the "Trial" section with the line: "He has been exonerated by ICJ from the charges." is factually incorrect. As stated in the "Background" section, the charges against Milosevic were manifold, in Bosnia and Kosovo. The judgement that it is unproven that Milosevic agreed a common plan with Karadzic does not mean that he was exonerated of the charges. He has not even been exonerated of agreeing a common plan (since he was not on trial), let alone exonerated of the charges. And he certainly has not been exonerated of the charges relating to Kosovo.

In any case, at the moment the article uses the ICTY's judgement on one issue - Milosevic's collusion with Bosnian Serbs - to give the impression that Milosevic has been exonerated of all charges. This should be amended.

Danielstn (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

(also seen at ANI) I agree there are issues both about relying on primary sources (ie the ICTY judgment itself) and some other potential sources and about relevance, given that the page is about Milosevic's trial, not his guilt or otherwise. That said, as long as the information is presented accurately, eg without the use of words such as "exoneration" and making clear it is in a different case and on a specific point, it seems sufficiently relevant to be worth noting at least. As for sources, B92 and RFERL were cited with approval at ANI as sources that justify excluding this info. I'm not sure they're any better or worse than RT or Telesur, which were cited in favour of inclusion. N-HH talk/edits 07:30, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

OK, the page has been changed again, by User:RudiLefkowitz, in the opposite direction that I suggested, including the text: "the Chamber concluded that there was not enough evidence to find Milošević guilty of the war crimes and crimes against humanity in which he had allegedly been complicit". This is not accurate (see my points above). The edit summary reads "Sources are valid, academically sound - do not remove". I don't disagree that the ICTY's judgement of Karadzic is a reliable document, but it is being misrepresented. I've made compromise changes that keep a reference to this source, and adds statements to make it clear that the ICTY did not arrive at a verdict in this trial (which was not clear before). I've removed what I consider to be misrepresentations of the source text.Danielstn (talk) 13:27, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

JamesJohnson2 In reference to User:Danielstn comment, his statement makes absolutely no sense for following reasons:

• Accusations brought against Slobodan Milosevic's and his alleged crimes are present in the article as they should be, as they are part of information related to him. Therefore it follows that any court findings about this alleged crimes, should also be present on the page. If we were to follow his logic we should also remove allegations against him as well which is ridiculous.
• While the trial was not about him, the court has investigated his involvement in Bosnian crimes and has found that there is no evidence which supports the claim that he has participated in the alleged crimes. Therefore this relates to the allegations against his person and should be present on the page.
• We are here to present the facts not to hide them, and it is a fact that "International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia" has investigated Slobodan Milosevic crimes during Bosnian war and has found that there is not enough evidence to support this accusations. As a Wikipedia editor you should present the facts not hide them, regardless of whether you like them or not. After all we are not here to say one side of the story.
• If you want to challenge the courts findings go to court do not pretend that they do not exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.175.59.143 (talk) 08:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

(response to User:JamesJohnson2) Responding to factual elements of the first two comments (which make the subsequent two redundant):

• "any court findings about this alleged crimes, should also be present on the page." Fine, but then it should make it very clear what this judgement said about which crimes. The way you've written the article makes it seem that he has been exonerated of all charges. This is categorically untrue, even of the Bosnian crimes, and very obviously untrue of the Kosovo and Croatian crimes.
• "the court has investigated his involvement in Bosnian crimes and has found that there is no evidence which supports the claim". This is also untrue. The court judged that no evidence was presented in this particular trial that supported the allegation. The court did not judge that this evidence does not exist, and the prosecution were not even trying to prove this allegation.

I'm happy to hear your thoughts on compromise edits that take these facts into account, but the current version of the article is extremely misleading and I will revert the changes if you don't want to do anything about it. My changes already recognised the existence of the Karadzic judgement, and that apparently wasn't enough of a compromise for you, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what should be done.

Danielstn (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

(response to User: Danielstn) :

You should leave the comments as they are, as they are both correct and academically sound.

In your modifications you have made mention that Milosevic case has been covered by "other trials", however you have failed to state what the findings of those trials were. To put it bluntly, that would be the same as sport presenter saying that there was soccer match between England and Germany at the world cup final with out informing anyone about the result.

Furthermore in your modification you make a false claim that findings were only about "collaboration between Radovan Karadžić and Milošević". This is not true, you should read the finding in article 3406. on pg. 1303 of ICTY report a little bit better, as it clearly states that court could not find enough evidence to support the claims that Slobodan Milosevic was involved in the "common plan". "Common plan" to which they are referring to, is outlined on pages 1294 to 1306 and covers all the crimes allegedly committed by Serbs in Bosnia during Bosnian war.

Also it is untrue that no evidence about Milosevic's involvement was presented during this trial as in the same article it is clearly stated that Milosevic was in fact opposed to "common plan". Court would never make such claim with no evidence being presented.

Finally please quit trying to hide facts, we are here to present facts not to hide them.

JamesJohnson2 (talk) 16:18, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

I made these minor edits to deal with the most immediately obvious problems here. There are others of course. I know it's a vain hope, but perhaps everyone could try to put their personal opinions about the topic to one side, and avoid using this page to argue about whether Milosevic has been maligned and traduced, or got away with more than he deserved. If you want to add your views to a forum about the Yugoslav wars, I am sure there are plenty of them out there. N-HH talk/edits 20:19, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

This is not my personal opinion here but opinion of ICTY which the other side is shamefully trying to delete. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 01:49, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

People's opinions tend inform how they would prefer to see information presented and what they declare to be unimpeachable "facts". Given that you appear to see this as being about "sides", that you have edited on nothing but Yugoslav/Serb-related issues and that you appear to have missed that most people are not talking about necessarily "deleting" the material in its entirety but about how best to present it accurately, my comment above seems fair enough. N-HH talk/edits 11:09, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

I should clarify the statement about sides, it refers to sides of the argument we are having and nothing else, argument was heated up long before I got involved. As far as facts go, if something is black I can not interpret it as being white, and it seems that opposing sides view is that you can as long as someone says that it is (and yes I do get upset when somebody tries that). I do not mind people modifying the article, as long as what they modify is correct and not attempt to hide facts, as you have probably noticed I did not delete your last two modifications as I believed they were somewhat fair. Modifications done previously by users who have started this argument have been just about deleting the above mentioned information by any means necessary and nothing else. Finally I would like to state that my personal interests are not part of this discussion, my arguments are, please address them if you wish to continue. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 13:00, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

In response to User:JamesJohnson2's comment "Finally please quit trying to hide facts, we are here to present facts not to hide them.", I've added some more facts to the end of the page - 1) that the trial itself returned no verdict on Milosevic's guilt, 2) that the Karadzic trial only dealt with the Bosnian war, and 3) included an extra line from the passage that JamesJohnson2 quoted. Danielstn (talk) 13:40, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Interpretation of primary sources

Further to the above discussion, User:JamesJohnson2 is repeatedly reverting attempts to accurately represent what the ICTY judgment in the Karadzic case says, to the point where it is becoming disruptive. Others, myself included, have acquiesced in their insistence that we include details from a primary source, relating to a separate case, not only in the body of the article but in the lead. You'd have thought that this acceptance of something which hits up against WP rules and practice on multiple levels was accomodation enough, but they are insisting that this page should say that judgment ruled there was "no evidence Milosevic committed war crimes". As has been repeatedly pointed out, without reliable and authoritative secondary sources confirming this interpretation of the judgment, this page simply cannot say that. Here is what the Karadzic judgment says at p1303, as cited:

• "based on the evidence before the Chamber ... the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan [to expel non-Serbs]".

Anything directly sourced to the judgment cannot say any more than that. FWIW the user's repeated reverts of attempts to limit the text here to that phrasing have also reverted attempts to maintain consistent date formats and, even still, use of accents in Milosevic's name, hence are doubly disruptive. N-HH talk/edits 11:54, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

You make several statements in your edit I will list and answer relevant ones bellow.

First you make a statement about how I am reverting attempts to accurately represent ICTY judgment about Slobodan Milosevic's involvement in 1992 to 1995 Bosnian war made during trial of Radovan Karadzic.

Nothing could be further from the truth, ICTY has during the trial found that no evidence exists that shows that Slobodan Milosevic has committed war crimes during Bosnian war, if it did it would have found him guilty. ICTY it in fact goes one step further stating that Milosevic has not only distanced him self from this crimes but has in fact provided opposition to them, the fact that ICTY has reliably proven his opposition to the act "exonerates" him completely from it.

The disruptions to the article are not coming from me but from you, your refusal to accept the facts and your further insistence to distort them. Original statement my side of the argument was making was that Milosevic was exonerated, this is the argument we should be arguing, you kept reverting that statement, at this point I tried to compromise and have changed my statement to state that no evidence was found, but you would not budge and have instead decided to use scare tactics and technicalities to drive your inaccurate point.

Second, you have made a statement, that no secondary sources exist that support my point.

Not true, they have always existed but you chose to ignore them. They were originally part of the article but were deleted by those who selectively report facts and hide them instead. I have added two I have found in five minutes to main article, lets see how long it takes you to delete them.

Not really part of this discussion but it relates, this is exactly why Trump got elected, people no longer believe the mainstream information as it's reported selectively and only to suite an agenda, good of you to drive that point.

You make another point that you and others have compromised with me in regard to displaying facts mentioned above.

Absolutely not try you and others have made every attempts to hide this facts in every way possible, this facts are only seeing the light of day on wikipedia because me and others have put them back on the page after you have deleted them. If it was up to you and others this ICTY judgment would have been deleted long ago. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 15:29, 05 January 2017 (UTC)

The user has now added a couple of op-ed pieces to buttress the claim, from RT and Counterpunch. These have been discussed previously, when the "exoneration" line was being pushed, with most other people declaring them not good sources. I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but they remain *opinion* pieces. Whether you happen to agree with their conclusions or not, they are not definitive analyses by legal experts, and there are plenty of other commentators of similar status, writing in other media outlets, who disagree. Adding these two doesn't help justify a bold assertion about "no evidence for war crimes" (nor am I suggesting we start adding opposing media commentary for balance btw). N-HH talk/edits 15:06, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

So what I believe they are good sources and so do other people, do not remove them. Also you and your buddy are not most people and your opinion is not evidence. Interesting that they were not on the page anymore, also its very interesting that you have replied so quick, your bosses must be paying you really well. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 15:37, 05 January 2017 (UTC)

Wow it didn't take long for that prediction to come true, not even two hours before your cohort Theroadislong removed the sources, all under guise of controversial edits. Well here is another prediction, WikiPedia will soon become FakePedia, site where real facts are censored and only selected points of view are presented. Site which is considered unreliable basically a propaganda den. It will not matter if something is a fact or not just that people running FakePedia agree with it, this page is a proof of that. You have already started the process by censoring which sources are valid and which are not, soon this site will be a big joke. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 8:00, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

My "cohort"? I've never interacted with them before. The reason my prediction about your being banned and the material corrected came "true" is not down to some kind of conspiracy in which I pulled strings to have my threats and wishes enforced by others, but simply because the outcome was eminently predictable. As for WP and facts, yes this place is a mess in many respects, but this isn't a good example of it. No one is censoring anything here. I and others are simply saying that you cannot blatantly *rewrite* the words of primary source (which in any event is about another trial altogether), nor rely on the *opinions* of one or two writers in marginal publications, to suddenly present one particular interpretation as solid "fact". You're the one rather obviously trying to throw in your preferred opinion and interpretation here, not anyone else. N-HH talk/edits 11:58, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Our opinions have already been presented, and as I do not plan to play a part of a parrot and repeat them over and over indefinitely this will be the last time I am repeating them. Extract from my previous reply above to same statements as before, answering exactly the same person who likes to repeat him self over and over: "ICTY has during the trial found that no evidence exists that shows that Slobodan Milosevic has committed war crimes during Bosnian war, if it did it would have found him guilty. ICTY in fact goes one step further, stating that Milosevic has not only distanced him self from this crimes but has in fact provided opposition to them, the fact that ICTY has reliably proven his opposition to the act "exonerates" him completely from it.". My opinion does not make that a fact, courts statement written in black and white does. It directly related to this page, as it's courts decision related to guilt of Slobodan Milosivic in Bosnian war crimes. Finally you and FakePedia are not only censoring me but are in fact censoring ICTY, you and your cohorts know it well. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 12:48, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Sometimes you have to repeat yourself when discussing something with someone who just doesn't get it, in the (clearly) vain hope that it might sink in. There is no "black and white" statement from the court that Milosevic was "completely exonerated" of war crimes. No rational or intelligent person can maintain that. You can, if you choose, interpret the court's decision as meaning that, but that is a different thing, and remains a subjective interpretation. Until you can point to the words "exoneration" or "war crimes/not guilty" in the ICTY judgment in the Karadzic case, or a consensus among authoritative legal analysis that makes that interpretation of the judgment, it's not going into this page. If the page is to say anything about that entirely separate trial judgment, it will say exactly what that judgment says and nothing more. This should not be complicated for anyone without an agenda. Also, have you checked the page's title? It is not "Is Milosevic Guilty of War Crimes? Discuss" or the "Milosevic Trial and any passing reference to him in other Trials", it is, simply, the "Trial of Slobodan Milosevic" – in which no verdict of course was ever issued. The entirely separate ICTY judgment being cited does not relate "directly" to his trial, only tangentially, and again no rational or intelligent person can seriously maintain that it does. As I noted before, there are plenty of blogs and forums out there where this kind of thing, and related consipracy theories about WP and the MSM suppressing the TRUTH, can be discussed. I think we're both done here now. N-HH talk/edits 13:57, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

You are absolutely right, unfortunately sometimes we do have to repeat our self in vain hopes that the message we are trying to communicate will reach those who lack the capacity to understand it. Saying this, I have lost all hope that the messages I am trying to communicate ,will ever be understood by you, you simply lack either good judgment of moral values to understand them. Court, does not have to use word exonerated to exonerate someone, anyone with half a brain understands that, the fact that Milosevic has been found to have worked against the crimes he is accused of, exonerates him of those crimes. I try to put that message again out there in vain hopes you will get it, which I am sure you will not. Here is a second message, judgment made relates to the crimes Milosevic was accused of during his trial and therefore relates to this page. Again my hopes that you will grasp this are very vain. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 14:43, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, he would have been exonerated if had been cleared of all charges in his own trial, and the judges had said there was no evidence to support any of them. But he wasn't and they didn't, which is why there is no serious secondary-source analysis which asserts as much. There was no verdict on the 66 charges made against him, either in his case or in Karadzic's. In passing and equivocal comments, the judges in the latter case simply said, briefly, that they had *seen* no evidence *in that case* that he had signed up to *one thing*, ie an expulsion plan. This is not hard. I had also btw of course accepted that the two cases were related, but not directly so. Maybe he would have been found entirely innocent in his own case, but we'll never know. And I wasn't asking for this page to say he was guilty, but for it not to make judgments either way. Now I really am done. As I say, please go elsewhere to argue the toss about this. N-HH talk/edits 17:05, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes he would have been cleared during his own trial had he not died under highly suspicious circumstances before a verdict has been passed, but no verdict was passed. Probably because he was killed, that statement is presented as conspiracy theory on the page because we do not have enough evidence for it but only suspect so. What we do have evidence for is that he was exonerated during another trial for crimes committed during Bosnian war, so that statement should be on page as a fact, the end. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 20:45, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

References