Convicted Balkans war-criminal swallows poison right after sentence, then dies

[DavidB.]

Will make him a martyr to nationalist Croats forever. A typical end not only to his lifetime but also to the lifetime of the Tribunal, which was never about real justice or about making neighboring peoples reconcile and always about non-Balkan judges punishing the Christian Serbs and Croats because it made Americans and Western Europeans feel good.

Edit: "Appropriate" was the wrong word. I do not think it is appropriate to think of Praljak as a martyr, but it is inevitable that Croat nationalists think of him that way. "Typical" was more... appropriate.

[DavidB.]

Will make him a martyr to nationalist Croats forever. A typical end not only to his lifetime but also to the lifetime of the Tribunal, which was never about real justice or about making neighboring peoples reconcile and always about non-Balkan judges punishing the Christian Serbs and Croats because it made Americans and Western Europeans feel good.

Uh..... are you saying the Serbs and Croats did nothing wrong, or...?

No, of course not. What I'm saying is that ICTY let Bosnian Muslims get off the hook and almost solely focused on punishing Serbs and Croats, which is completely in line with the American geopolitical direction (at least at the time). Doesn't excuse any of the bad things Croat and Serbian leaders did.

[DavidB.]

There are Muslims that have been charged and tried by the ICTY.

The exceptions that prove the rule.