OPINION

War crimes justice slow in coming

News, Noah Feldman, Published on 04/12/2017

» The suicide of Croatian war criminal Slobodan Praljak in open court last week was bizarre -- mostly because it felt like something out of another century. Sure, Hermann Goering famously cheated the executioner at Nuremberg by swallowing cyanide. But Praljak wasn't going to be executed, no matter how many innocent civilians he was found guilty of killing. In the highly civilised, highly bureaucratic world of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the worst thing that can happen is a long jail sentence -- like the 20 years awarded to Praljak.