Remember the Bonn Powers for Bosnia and Herzegovina – the supposed authority bestowed on the High Representative by the ‘international community’ to allow him/her to remove recalcitrant Bosnians from office or otherwise ‘move forward’ the ‘peace process’? The impressive thing was that as far as I could see the Bonn Powers […]
Exhibit A: a superb article describing research which shows convincingly how the influence of the bureaucratic-cultural disciplines of the Austro-Hungarian Empire lives on in today’s Europe. Thus: Our results show that past formal institutions can leave a long-lasting legacy through cultural norms – even after some are generations of being governed […]
Here is leading human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC talking about the Mladic arrest, in standard terms. Apart from this: He could – and should – have been taken into custody between 1996 and his disappearance in 2002, but diplomats then did not trust international justice: "The capture of Karadzic […]
This rubbish (below) has just appeared in my Inbox. Names and email addresses deleted in the unlikely event they are real. (The reference to Pavarotti reminds me of this famous occasion in Mostar.) Dear Sir, I am emailing you, as I currently have a client who has possibly been defrauded of […]
Here’s the full judgement in the Sharon Shoesmith appeal. Basically, she succeeded in getting her dismissal by Haringey Borough (London) proclaimed unlawful by the Appeal Court for a number of solid procedural reasons which together amounted (said the Court) to unfair treatment. I liked these passages, going to the issue of […]
Asks Dan Hannan MEP. He favours one or other but not ICTY as it is too slow and (he believes) too compromised in different ways. Here is an earlier (quite good) piece I wrote about ICTY and the regional War Crimes Tribunals in former Yugoslavia. This Mladic one is just too […]
A colleague of mine from old FCO days has a droll self-immolatory story about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF who now faces serious criminal charges in New York. Years ago there was a tradition in the FCO that an Embassy would send short reports back to London if […]
For many years I have been a friend of the Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies, a sturdy enemy of collectivism based in deepest Westminster. they did fine work in mobilising anti-communist analysis and economic thought during the Cold War and thereafter. This week they hosted a fine presentation and discussion […]
Today is the 8th anniversary of the assassination of Serbia’s dynamic young prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. And as the years drift by, Balkan conspiracy theories spread their twisted tentacles in more and more directions. Here for those who can use Google Translator are the mutterings of close Djindjic spin-doctor Vladimir […]
Off I dash in the general direction of Belgrade, my first visit back there in quite a few years. I have not mentioned here a new role of mine, namely a member of the Board of trustees of The Lord Slynn of Hadley European Law Foundation. This is a group […]
