Computer Analysis ‘Could Show Karadzic’s Intent in Srebrenica’
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Professors Yvonne McDermott Rees and Federico Cerutti have asked the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to be allowed amicus curiae (friend of the court) status at former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic’s appeal against his conviction in order to present their analysis of his alleged intent to commit genocide.
Their request says that they have examined Karadzic’s first-instance verdict using a new computer program called CISpaces, analysing the argumentation used in the court’s decision.
The analysis relates to the conclusions and inferences of the court – which sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison for genocide in Srebrenica and other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina – about Karadzic’s intent to eliminate Srebrenica’s Bosniaks in July 1995.
McDermott Rees told BIRN that Karadzic’s case was chosen because “it had received an unprecedented level of academic coverage at the time of the judgment”, in which several authors criticised the findings that inferred Karadzic’s intent.
“We wished to assist the appeals chamber in its determination of whether the trial chamber erred in making these findings by unpacking the precise evidentiary basis for them, and by pointing out the inferences apparently drawn by the trial chamber in reaching its conclusions,” said McDermott Rees.
The professors’ 27-page request lists the court’s key conclusions related to the events in Srebrenica, as well as a timeline, and the connections between the times when Karadzic had certain information and gave statements, and explains which inferences and conclusions were made from these facts.
Despite the fact that their analysis says that certain issues in the verdict are not addressed properly, McDermott Rees and Cerutti claim they only want to relay the conclusions made by the court’s trial chamber, while the appeals chamber will decide whether Karadzic’s verdict was reasonable.
“A common phrase we often see in judgments is that findings are based on ‘the totality of the evidence’ or a holistic approach. We believe that a more systematic approach, whereby findings are clearly and explicitly linked to the evidence presented, would benefit international criminal tribunals and the communities they serve,” said McDermott Rees.
“Writing and submitting our brief was a small step in encouraging that direction,” she added.
Cerutti told BIRN that the CISpaces program is a “straightforward tool which implements theories of argumentation in artificial intelligence”.
Hague prosecutor Laurel Baig asked the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals to reject McDermott Rees and Cerutti’s request.
Baig said that the submission should be rejected because ‘friend of the court’ submissions are generally limited to questions of law, while the professors want to “offer observations” on the court’s factual findings.
She also said the deliberate exclusion of “contextual findings on the role and conduct” of Karadzic also weighs in favour of rejecting the request.
“The applicants explain that when they identified purportedly conflicting pieces of information, they treated them as being equally probable. Their inability to take into account the judicial process of weighing conflicting evidence fatally skews their analysis. It makes their approach unsuitable as a tool for analysing the reasonableness of the chamber’s conclusions,” said Baig.
Baig also argued that McDermott Rees and Cerutti failed to explain the role of the computer software or “state-of-the-art algorithms for efficient reasoning” in their analysis.
The Hague Tribunal sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison in March 2016 for the genocide in Srebrenica, a campaign of persecution of non-Serbs across Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The verdict acquitted him of charges of committing genocide elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.
Both Karadzic and the Hague prosecutors will appeal against the verdict at hearings scheduled for April 23 and 24.
