Newswise — Michael Kelly, a professor of law at Creighton University and an expert in international criminal law, is available to speak on the sentencing of Radovan Karadzic, who orchestrated the genocide of thousands of Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995.
Kelly annually leads a group of law students to Nuremberg, Germany, to discuss the beginnings of international criminal law, and that contingent often visits the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Netherlands. In the last few years, Karadzic's trial has been a focal point of those visits.
A link to Kelly's biography and CV is here.
Kelly is available for telephone or Skype interviews.
Kelly's thoughts on the sentencing follow:
"The conviction of Radovan Karadic for his role in the Srebrenica genocide of Bosnian Muslim men and boys by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague is a watershed for international criminal justice.
"Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said during the Clinton Administration that the measure of this tribunal’s success would be the trial and conviction of the political and military leaders who orchestrated the carnage unleashed by Bosnian Serb forces during the Balkan civil wars. Radovan Karadic is that political leader. Ratko Mladic is the military leader, and his trial is still in progress.
"Unlike the Nuremberg trials of Nazi wartime leaders in 1946, which moved swiftly and resulted in many death sentences, international criminal justice moves more slowly and deliberately today and sentences of death are not allowed.
"The evidentiary record is much more comprehensive and the defense is granted much wider latitude in modern tribunals. Mr. Karadic is now 70 years old, so his sentence of 40 years is effectively a life sentence.
"Second-year Creighton Law student Chelsey Kenney was fortunate to be the only American law student interning at the tribunal in The Hague in the Fall of 2015 and was able to assist the prosecution with drafting the proposed language for the Karadic judgment. In this sense, she carries on a long tradition of Creighton University School of Law with international criminal law, from the participation of Mr. T.R. Delaney (class of 1930) in the trial of Hideki Tojo during the post-war Tokyo trials in 1947 to the current Creighton summer program on international criminal law and the Holocaust in Nuremberg, Auschwitz, and The Hague."
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