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VIOLETA BESIREVIÉ
Finally, the ICTY had neither managed to contribute to reconciliation by
blaming specific individuals rather than nations or ethnic groups.”* Among many
reasons causing this failure, plea barging practice figures prominently. Before the
ICTY, many guilty pleas, induced through plea bargains, were accepted on the
ground, inter alia, that they could aid reconciliation by helping truth-establishing.”*®
However, plea agreements do not bring truth — they are traded compromises
that might obscure rather than reveal the truth and freeze the healing process.
Besides, for promoting reconciliation, it is not enough that defendants only express
remorse, but also they should show effectively, through their actions, that they
are genuinely sorry for what they have done.”° That pure acknowledgment of guilt
is not enough, testifies the plea agreement between the ICTY Prosecutor and
Biljana Plavsic, charged with crimes against humanity. After being released from
prison (without serving a complete sentence), she did nothing to demonstrate her
willingness to help reconciliation in the region.
The “why” question attached to the ICTY’s little effect on reconciliation
between the divided nations in the ex-Yugoslav region has many additional
answers.”’ However, the bottom line here is that all conflicting parties in the
region of the former Yugoslavia still see themselves as victims of crimes for
which the members of other nations or ethnic groups are collectively responsible.
Virtually, each judgment rendered by ICTY was comprehended as an attack on
the whole nation rather than as a product of justice. In other words, the ICTY did
not manage to contribute to reconciliation by breaking down what Stuart Ford
termed “inaccurate and self-serving narratives of victimization.””*
LARGER LESSONS
In a normative sense, Nuremberg’s legacy was crucial for doing justice in the
region of the former Yugoslavia. Beyond the promotion of justice, the Nuremberg
model may or may not apply to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, as the trial
24 For a detailed discussion see Marko Milanovi¢, The Impact of the ICTY on the Former
Yugoslavia: An Anticipatory Postmortem, American Journal of International Law 110
(2016), 233-259.
°5 For more see, Janine Natalya Clark, Plea Bargaining at the ICTY: Guilty Pleas and
Reconciliation, The European Journal of International Law 20 (2009), 415-436.
Clark, Plea Bargaining, 433.
” For a detailed discussion see Diane Orentlicher, Some Kind of Justice: The ICTY’s Impact
in Bosnia and Serbia. Oxford, OUP, 2018.
28 Stuart K. Ford, A Social Psychology Model of the Perceived Legitimacy of International
Criminal Courts: Implications for the Success of Transitional Justice Mechanisms,
Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 45 (2012), 405-476, 476.
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