The Berlin Tribunal was presided by a distinguished Hamburg University professor of international law, Dr. Norman Paech, who insisted that the verdict would be based on strictly legal criteria. Berlin's proximity to Eastern Europe was reflected in the composition of the panel of jurists, who had come from Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Russia and Macedonia. The former East German ambassador to Belgrade, Ralph Hartmann, a genuine expert on the region, presented a recapitulation of key events and statements that clearly demonstrated the major responsibility of the Federal Republic of Germany in preparing the war, both by actively encouraging armed ethnic Albanian separatists and by pushing other NATO allies toward military intervention. Hartmann and Loquai are among the authors of a growing number of German books which are devastating in their refutation of NATO claims. Indeed, if certain German media and the German government bear major international responsibility for initiating the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991, by the same token German critics of the process are perhaps the best informed and most thorough in their denunciations.
Nobody understands the German right better than the German left.
It does not settle but rather raises a number of questions. The verdict, as expected, found the top officials of NATO and its member states guilty of having committed an aggression in violation of all the relevant treaties and international agreements, from the United Nations Charter to the NATO Treaty itself, as well as numerous conventions. The Berlin Tribunal condemned not only Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, defense minister Rudolf Scharping and foreign minister Joschka Fischer, but also all the members of the Bundestag who had voted in favor of a military engagement that clearly violated the Federal Republic's international engagements. To prevent such military globalization, the Tribunal said it was imperative to pursue examination of the preconditions, objectives and consequences of the war against Yugoslavia and to draw attention to its eventual geostrategic implications. Moreover, the use of such weapons as depleted uranium and cluster bombs clearly endangered the civilian population, both during and after the actual bombing, and constituted a particularly grave violation of international humanitarian law.