L-r: Philippe Sands, Julian Borger, Adam LeBor, Milan Dinić & Kemal Pervanic. Photo by Tolly Robinson.

On Wednesday 9 March, the Guardian‘s world affairs editor Julian Borger was joined by a panel of experts to discuss the search for Balkan war criminals as detailed in his new book, The Butcher’s Trail – How the Search for Balkan War Criminals Became the World’s Most Successful Manhunt. 

The Butcher’s Trail is a factual account of the pursuit and capture of former Yugoslav war criminals under the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which, according to chair Adam LeBor, an author and journalist, “reads like a thriller.”

Borger said that he wrote the book because “it struck me that this [capturing the criminals and bringing them to justice] was finally an extraordinary achievement and there was lots that hadn’t been told.”

However, he admitted that when it came to researching the book he found it difficult to encourage people to comment: “I got used to a great amount of rejection.”

Milan Dinić, a Serbian journalist who has worked in the region for a decade and assisted Borger in producing the book, said it offered “a very good revelation of what actually happened, in the sense that it provides an insight about the people.”

Typically brilliant & engaging event this evening @frontlineclub with @julianborger @KemalPervanic @adamlebor @MilanDinic1 & @philippesands

— Steven J Fowler (@stevenjfowler) March 9, 2016

Philippe Sands, a lawyer at Matrix chambers and a Professor of International Law at UCL, praised Borger’s “fascinating book” and said it raised interesting questions about the reasoning behind the creation of a dedicated war crimes tribunal.

Sands asked: “What was the point of creating a Yugoslav war crimes tribunal? Was it a place to tell stories, was it a place to write history books, was it a place to do justice, was it something different? Was it all of the above?”

He told the audience the tribunal was: “A creature of a political settlement that was part of a response to a feeling of guilt and inadequacy… and as part of the mechanism for delivering a political solution.”

Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, spoke about the impact of the tribunal for him personally: “The tribunal, in a way, has enabled me to go back… my work [as a human rights activist, peace builder and filmmaker] is possible because of the tribunal.”

However, Pervanic added that today Bosnia is “not doing well.”

He put this down to the fact that: “The international community has instigated a system that keeps criminals in power in perpetuity.”

Dinić furthered this in saying that the war itself had four sides, with the fourth being the “international community, which played a high role.”

LeBor asked the panellists to expand on the “role of individuals” in bringing the war criminals to trial.

Borger said: “The role of individuals was key… They acted as mavericks, all of them.”

Sands took the opportunity to makes links with current events and injustices. Speaking about the process of bringing about justice, and the two-pronged strategy of prevention and the prosecution of perpetrators, he said: “Why is this not happening in relation to what’s going on in Syria?”

He warned that justice was a long process: “Memories are very long, and the idea that in just 20 years you can bring to an end the kind of conditions that have given rise to the horrors we know about, I think is an illusion. Justice is a sticking plaster.”

Sands went on to say: “What Julian has done is explain to us the mechanics of delivering a justice system. The question that we now have to ask ourselves is what was the point of it all?”

Bringing the discussion to an end, Pervanic reflected on his personal experience and his hope for justice in Bosnia: “For a lot of people justice means so many different things, because for most of them it’s a very personal thing. We need to rise above personal feelings to see this.”

The Balkan Wars of the nineties resulted in the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazi era. When the fighting ended, a fourteen-year manhunt began in order to bring those responsible to justice.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) eventually accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, including Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and Slobodan Milošević, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

In his new book The Butcher’s Trail, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Julian Borger, documents this monumental manhunt. He will be joining us to reveal what he discovered from the special forces sol­diers, intelligence officials, and investigators that were involved, and how this process could set a precedent for bringing future war criminals to justice.

Julian Borger will be joined in conversation by: Philippe Sands QC, an expert in international law; Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, he has since dedicated his work to education, reconciliation and peace-building; and Milan Dinić, who worked as a journalist for a decade for media outlets in Serbia and the Balkans. The discussion will be chaired by author and journalist, Adam LeBor.

Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor for the Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War for the BBC and the Guardian, and returned to the Balkans to report on the Kosovo conflict in 1999. He also served as the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent and its Washington bureau chief.

Following the latest revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Frontline Club’s First Wednesday panel on 6 November gathered to discuss Has NSA spying “reached too far”?

L-R: Owen Bennett-Jones, Julian Borger, James P. Rubin, Steven Erlanger. Photo: Sally Ashley-Cound

Chair Owen Bennett-Jones, a freelance journalist and a host of Newshour on the BBC World Service started off by asking if anyone really knows how much data has been collected?

Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief for The New York Times said:

“I’m not sure we know the answer to the question to be honest. Because these things have been kept secret and they remain secret.”

Julian Borger, The Guardian’s diplomatic editor, continued:

“There is an awful lot of material and it’s a very lengthy process figuring out what in it is of public interest…it’s the process of discussing with the government agencies involved about what it means and the balance between public interest and national security.”

James Rubin, a visiting scholar at Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute and former chief spokesperson for the US State Department, added:

“I don’t think Snowden knows. He’s got 50,000 documents from the NSA. I took one of these documents and I actually know something about this stuff …it’s hard to understand even for those who know the code words.”

Nigel Inkster, director of transnational threats and political risk at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), who served in the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) from 1975 to 2006, had some praise for the NSA and GCHQ:

“We’ve got this huge explosion of communications. . . . They were confronted with this new reality which they had to make sense of and I have to say, in the circumstances I think they’ve done a rather remarkable job.”

An audience member asked if “the threats justify the methods”?

Inkster replied:

“We elect a government and this is one of the responsibilities that they are assigned. It is for the government of the day to judge on the basis of the best information it can, what the security environment it faces.”

The panel were asked if the release of these documents has changed anything – has damage been done?

https://twitter.com/caro_schmitt/statuses/398172032355270656

Rubin:

“We’ll never know what changed people’s behaviours. People’s behaviours are going to change.”

Inkster:

“We will never know how different would the course of WWII been if Bletchley park had not broken and read the material that was being transmitted over Enigma. How can we judge? You can never do a counter factual assessment.”

Erlanger:

“There’s another level of damage which is to trust, to international relationships; the United States has a big problem with its allies.”

US goodwill was exhausted by Bush and Obama needs to deposit more goodwill. Remark @frontlineclub debate Why #nsa hit US reputation so hard.

— Karen Melchior (ex-verif) (@karmel80) November 6, 2013

Christoph Scheuermann, London bureau chief for German weekly Der Spiegel, seemed surprised at the panel for thinking that anything had changed:

“I thought this was really naive, we don’t live in an age where terrorists…have to read The Guardian or Der Spiegel or the New York Times to know what intelligence agencies are capable of.”

Borger added:

“We share all of GCHQ material, names of everyone who works there, addresses, what they like to do at the weekend, with 850,000 Americans. Half of those people are private contractors. So the odds of that getting out are very high.”

After all this effort, disruption and political chaos, what were the benefits of the NSA gathering all the information?

Inkster:

“Knowing who’s in touch with who can be as – if not more important than – knowing what they’re saying to each other. This is a business that the bad guys are trying to hide the fact that they’re in communication.

“[Secondly] you can use analysis of big data to ascertain patterns of correlation, which are simply not discernable with lesser data sets. This has applications in all sorts of areas, in retail, public health…you can identify all sorts of things.”

One point the panel agreed on was that the world has completely changed from the days of phone bugging and code-breaking:

Watch the event:

https://soundcloud.com/frontlineclub/first-wednesday-has-nsa-spying