Not being a great fan of metric football (for reasons that I once explained [second item]), I was much taken by this one-liner from Andrew McCarthy: “Moving on from the World Cup to other interminable international proceedings during which nothing much happens, yet another war crimes trial got underway today at the Hague.”
His substantive point is worth pondering, too:
Hamdan was charged with conspiracy – specifically, membership in the al Qaeda conspiracy to mass-murder civilians in violation of the laws of war. The Hamdan plurality, however, claimed this violated international law because, according to Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer, the crime of conspiracy is not recognized as an offense under the law of war.
Well what do you know: In the war crimes trial begun today, the Times explains that to convict the six defendants, “prosecutors must demonstrate … that Belgrade had a ‘criminal plan’ to permanently expel a large portion of the Kosovo Albanians[.] …[L]awyers familiar with the tribunal proceedings said that prosecutors must prove there was a Serb plan to expel them.” (Emphasis [and ellipses] added [by Mr. McCarthy].)
A conspiracy, of course, is nothing more than a plan to which people agree.
Maybe if the Defense Department had just charged Hamdan with involvement in a plan to mass-murder civilians, instead of a conspiracy to mass-murder civilians, the make-it-up-as-you-go-along standards of international law would have been satisfied.
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