At the time of publication of Fatic's book, only one convicted prisoner, Dusan Erdemovic, was serving a sentence, and he was purging his five-year term in Norway. All of the other accused were still in provisional detention in The Hague under conditions that rank among the best in the world. The Fatic book ought never to have been released by a reputable academic publishing house. Unfortunately, therefore, the intriguing question that is announced in the title of the work goes unanswered. Of course, aside from reconciliation, the Tribunals are also expected to deter.
Criminologists know the difficulty of demonstrating whether deterrence is actually effective.
Certainly the threatened prosecution of Serb leaders, announced by Louise Arbour prior to the Kosovo bombing campaign, seems to have little effect on the Milosevic regime. Hostility within the Former Yugoslavia to the work of the Tribunal is discouraging, though perhaps inevitable. After all, post-war Germany took many years to accept the legitimacy of the Nuremberg trials. Within Rwanda, the promised dividends of international justice for civil society seem more positive. In September 1998, when the first judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was released, I found myself lecturing in criminal law to young Rwandan law students at the national university in Butare.