Opinion: Putin needs a date with a tribunal

You’d be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Miroslav Tadić.

His trial was overshadowed by bigger cases in the aftermath of the horrific wars in the Balkans in the 1990s.The Bosnian Serb was just a bit player in just one indictment handed down for crimes against humanity in northern Bosnia. He helped manage a brutal detention center for non-combatants.

For his small part, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague sentenced Tadić to eight years in prison.

Here are some crimes Tadić, a cafe owner, did not commit:

• Invasion of a sovereign country without provocation

• Indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations

• Extensive destruction of property, not justified by military necessity

Crimes like those are perpetrated by folks much higher up the food chain – like Vladimir Putin, whose growing list of atrocities now spans more than two decades.

Since taking power in 1999, Putin has overseen a scorched-earth crackdown on Chechnya; invaded two sovereign countries, Georgia and Ukraine; massively bombed civilian targets on behalf of a fellow dictator in Syria; and poisoned dissidents on foreign soil. In his own country, he has presided over the murder of dissidents and the imprisonment of political opponents, protesters, journalists, and adherents of non-Orthodox faiths.

His regime also bears responsibility for the July 17, 2014, downing of flight MH-17, which killed all 183 passengers on board.

Putin, by consolidating power and silencing civil society and the independent media, has made himself a dictator whose portfolio of evil gets bigger with each passing day in Ukraine.

In modern European history, his crimes arguably already have surpassed those of former Serbian President Slobodan Milosević, whose forces helped support the siege on Sarejevo, as well as the wholesale slaughter and deportation project known as “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and Kosovo. Milosević died in prison during his trial.

Putin, who is threatening even more barbaric tactics, is rapidly approaching the same level of criminality as Hermann Göring, the Nazi who commanded the Luftwaffe and an architect of the Holocaust. He was sentenced to death for war crimes at the tribunal in Nuremberg but committed suicide before he could be executed.

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As was the case with Göring for post-war Europe and Milosević for post-war former Yugoslavia, bringing Putin and his henchmen to justice is vital for there to be justice for the victims, deterrence of other such crimes and for any hope of reconciliation between Russia and Ukraine, indeed, between Russia and the West.

Fortunately, the calls for justice are becoming louder and more frequent.

On Monday, the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) announced it would open an investigation. Their findings will jdd to previous findings of war crimes committed since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

To those who say the prosecution of Putin amounts to wishful thinking, consider what Kemal Mehinović , a victim who testified against Tadić and others in The Hague at the same hour Milosević’s case was under way – told me at the time:

“I never imagined (Milosević) would be on trial. He was the one who started everything.”

For the sake of humanity, the free world must start imagining Putin’s date with a tribunal.

Israelsen was a U.S. Foreign Service officer from 2009 to 2019, with postings in Italy, Moldova, El Salvador, and Washington, D.C. As a journalist for The Salt Lake Tribune, he traveled to Bosnia, Kosovo, and The Hague to report on war crimes. He now lives in Austin.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Opinion: Putin needs a date with a tribunal