{"id":20050,"date":"2016-04-19T21:07:13","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T02:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20050"},"modified":"2016-04-19T21:07:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-20T02:07:13","slug":"handcuffs-at-the-hague-how-i-was-arrested-by-a-war-crimes-tribunal-for-my-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20050","title":{"rendered":"Handcuffs at the Hague: How I Was Arrested by a War Crimes Tribunal–for My Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HANDCUFFS AT THE HAGUE<\/a><\/h3>\n

How I Was Arrested by a War Crimes Tribunal \u2014 for My Journalism<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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IT WAS A DAY\u00a0of reckoning for Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb war criminal, and a day of reckoning for me.<\/p>\n

On March 24, I stood outside the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, surrounded by dozens of men and women who had survived massacres and concentration camps and rapes during the Bosnian war. I had joined the gathering on Churchillplein before the announcement of the tribunal\u2019s verdict for Karadzic, who was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. I noticed a female security officer from the U.N. weaving back and forth through the crowd, trying to reach me. I realized, as the officer grabbed for my wrist and tried to put handcuffs on me, that my freedom was at issue on this day, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s crazy, she has no jurisdiction,\u201d I shouted at a Dutch police officer who stood before me stone-faced. I didn\u2019t try to run. I was on Dutch territory so I assumed the Dutch police would not allow a U.N. officer to arrest me. Having no police powers, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had always depended on member nations to execute its warrants \u2014 but this was about to change. Ironically, the tribunal\u2019s first arrest by one of its own officers was going to be of a journalist who had reported on warlords and mass killers, rather than an actual war criminal.<\/p>\n

Within the time it took to do an interview on Croatian television recounting the U.N. security officer\u2019s initial and failed attempt to arrest me, backup from the tribunal had arrived. I understood what was happening when the Bosnian survivors around me\u00a0began to yell<\/a>, \u201cShe\u2019s ours, we won\u2019t let you take her away.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HANDCUFFS AT THE HAGUE How I Was Arrested by a War Crimes Tribunal \u2014 for My Journalism IT WAS A DAY\u00a0of reckoning for Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb war criminal, and a day of reckoning for me. On March 24, I stood outside the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, surrounded by dozens […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13544],"class_list":["post-20050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-florence-hartmann"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20052,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20050\/revisions\/20052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}