Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of Slobodan Milosevic

Preface: A Personal Note; Acknowledgments; Note on Usage and Conventions; Abbreviations; Cast of Characters Introduction; 1: Opening Statements; 2: Milosevic Was Warned; 3: The Lead-up to War; 4: War in Kosova; 5: Massacre and Cover-up; 6: Milosevic's Rise to Power; 7: The Exercise of (De Facto) Power; 8: War and Attempts at Peace; 9: War Comes to Bosnia; 10: Concentration Camps and Safe Areas; 11: Genocide; 12: Interregnum; 13: The World According to Milosevic; 14: Constructing Reality: Milosevic's Loyal Officers; 15: Croatia and Bosnia: A Case of Self-Defense?; 16: Conclusions and Recommendations; Afterword Appendix I: Law of the Tribunal; Appendix II: List of Defense Witnesses; Appendix III: Chronology; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Judith Armatta is a lawyer, journalist, and human-rights advocate who monitored the trial of Slobodan Milosevic on behalf of the Coalition for International Justice. Her dispatches from The Hague appeared in "Tribunal Update," published by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting; "Monitor," a magazine of political commentary published in Montenegro; the "International Herald Tribune"; and the "Chicago Tribune." Prior to her work in The Hague, Armatta worked for the American Bar Association's Central and East European Law Initiative, opening offices in Belgrade, Serbia (in 1997) and Montenegro (in 1999). During the Kosova War, she headed a War Crimes Documentation Project among Kosovar Albanian refugees in Macedonia. Armatta currently consults on international humanitarian, human rights, and other rule-of-law issues, most recently in the Middle East. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"Will Armatta's book, or others like it, get us any closer to achieving what is arguably the most valuable and probably the most realisable objective of these courts, which would be to lay out a record of evidence that could be used to justify earlier and more decisive political and military action in future conflicts with similar potential for war crimes? We can hope so. But we need to recognise that there is no evidence that the prospect of punishment deters would-be perpetrators of mass atrocities." - Geoffrey Nice, deputy prosecutor in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, London Review of Books "In Twilight of Impunity, Judith Armatta has done for the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the Butcher of the Balkans, what Hannah Arendt did for the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Architect of the Holocaust: present an unflinching depiction of the crimes, the anguish of the victims and witnesses, the arrogance of the killers, the virtues and flaws of the judicial process, and the banality of the evil that can arise when leaders assume they enjoy impunity."oChuck Sudetic, author of Blood and Vengeance and co-author of Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity's Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity "As the only independent lawyer to have monitored and reported regularly from the Milosevic trial courtroom from its first day, Judith Armatta has produced an unparalleled, first-hand account of the first truly international war crimes trial of a national leader in history. Armatta captures courtroom atmosphere and personalities with a thoroughly engaging reportorial style, but brings her legal and regional expertise to bear in explaining and analyzing important testimony and judicial decisions. Twilight of Impunity is not only a singular history of the trial, but a compelling narrative of the major battles and convoluted diplomatic struggles of the Balkan wars. The book is filled with previously unreported insights arising from the testimony of major figures of the era,