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SPIEGEL Interview With War Crimes Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte

'Politics Have Interfered With Our Work'

Chief UN War Crimes Prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia Carla Del Ponte spoke with SPIEGEL about allegations surrounding her legal performance and the obstacles to bringing war criminals to justice.

SPIEGEL: From a legal perspective, the dictator Slobodan Milosevic died an innocent man. The alleged war criminals Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are still at large. Has the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia failed? Are you just catching the small fish while the big ones are let off the hook?

Del Ponte: I'm 80 percent certain that Mladic will be arrested before the end of the year, possibly in the coming weeks. Serbia is determined to enter the EU. A key prerequisite for EU accession is cooperating with the tribunal.

SPIEGEL: Why should the Serbs come through this time, after breaking so many promises?

Del Ponte: It wasn't until mid-2006 that I realized the Serbs themselves never intended to arrest Mladic. The idea was to persuade him to turn himself in. This approach actually worked with a number of other war criminals. In early 2007, a serious plan was finally drawn up to arrest him in his hideout in Belgrade. Following considerable difficulties, Serbian premier Vojislav Kostunica eventually agreed to support this plan. However, there still remain cooperation issues between the military and civilian intelligence agencies.

SPIEGEL: The tribunal is supposed to close all cases by late 2008. What will happen if Mladic or Karadzic still haven't been apprehended by then?

Del Ponte: Then we have a problem. The Security Council would then have to extend the mandate of the tribunal, with a reduced staff, until these men are taken into custody. The evidence against both of them is so incriminating that a trial could be rapidly conducted …

SPIEGEL: … provided the international community truly wants to see them brought to justice. Your former spokeswoman, Florence Hartman, maintains in a new book that the tribunal was founded in order not to function -- and that it has been stonewalled continuously by the US, the UK and France. She says American diplomats have threatened you, and that the EU broke off all talks with you for months.

Del Ponte: That's her interpretation, not mine. I'm going to make my version public in a book next year. But, needless to say, politics have interfered with our work. On a number of occasions, I've complained to the Security Council about the lack of support from the international community.

SPIEGEL: There's no denying that a number of countries have prevented Karadzic from being detained. Why is there so much support for a murderer?

Del Ponte: Karadzic could have easily been arrested before 1998, but nobody was interested in putting him behind bars. The justification given was that they feared it could spark renewed fighting which might endanger their own troops. They insisted that their initial priority was to establish peace.

SPIEGEL: In 2005 you voiced suspicions that there may have been an agreement between the US negotiator at the time, Richard Holbrooke, and Karadzic to assure him protection from the tribunal.

Del Ponte: I had information to this effect. But I'm a public prosecutor and so I depend on evidence that will stand up in court. I haven't found this proof yet. Now the Serbs are investigating the matter themselves.

SPIEGEL: Karadzic's daughter Sonja says her father wanted to turn himself in back in 1999, and that he sent 300 pages of exonerating evidence to the tribunal. In return, she says, the court assured him that the case would be dropped shortly after it began.

Del Ponte: It's true that Karadzic sent a message to one of our investigators in 1999, saying he would come in voluntarily. Then he suddenly changed his mind. All other claims are nonsense.

SPIEGEL: What would have been your closing arguments in the Milosevic case? Was he the mastermind behind all the crimes? What were his objectives?

Del Ponte: Of course, I was furious over his death. For me this meant four years of painstaking work down the drain, with no judicial satisfaction. Milosevic was implicated in everything that happened. He pursued a policy of naked aggression using criminal methods. It was never about defending the Serbs. Mladic and Karadzic drove to Belgrade two to three times a week to meet with Milosevic. That says it all!

SPIEGEL: Did he know about the massacres at Srebrenica?

Del Ponte: He was partly responsible for them. Mladic certainly did not wake up one morning and decide to commit genocide. Things like this are prearranged. It's not possible to murder 8,000 people in four days without prior planning.

SPIEGEL: The US allegedly recorded nearly all of Milosevic's conversations, including those concerning Srebrenica. However, only a fraction of these were made available to you -- and they weren't delivered to you until many years later. There are reports that video recordings were manipulated before they were passed on to the tribunal.