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Reviews of Twilight of Impunity:
General Wesley Clark was Supreme Allied Commander
Europe of NATO during the Kosovo War from 1997 until 2000.
Read his review of Twilight of Impunity, Washington Monthly,
July/August 2010. For a
plain
text version of this document
please click the link.
"Nobel Laureate physicist Richard Feynman describes in his autobiography how,
prior to being examined for his doctoral degree, he sat down by himself for
a few days and organized everything he knew—and we knew—about physics. It
must have been wonderful. And that’s just what Judith Armatta has done for
the Balkans, the International Criminal Tribunal, and former Serb dictator
Slobodan Milošević, in this amazing book about Milošević's trial in the
Hague. Armatta is a lawyer, journalist, and human rights advocate who
monitored the war crimes trial of Milošević from its inception in 2001 until
his death during the trial in 2005. She has brought a boots-on-the-ground
understanding of the Balkans from previous work in Serbia, Montenegro, and
Macedonia. In her observations, she proves to be an acute student of law,
character, strategy, and history.
"None of this is easy going. The Balkans is obscure geographically, marginal
economically, and loaded with unpronounceable names, often missing vowels.
Yet the barbarous inhumanity of some of the participants was shocking, and,
at first, ignited widespread media attention. Yet the war—and it was one
long war of Serb aggression—was tortuous by design, and, without American
ground force casualties, easily ignored by much of the media in the end. In
the U.S., efforts to mediate and, ultimately, intervene assumed a partisan
character. Even the tribunal has often been publicly derided in the United
States. And the trial itself received scant public attention."
London School of Economics Politics and Political Science,
British Politics and Policy Blog. Reviewed by Ramona Wadi, December 11, 2011.
Excerpts from the review:
"A vital read for students and researchers interested in the ramifications
and contradictions of international law and justice, Ramona Wadi finds that Judith Armatta’s
detailed narration and analysis
of Milošević's trial an important contribution to the field."
"[Twilight of Impunity] completely immersed me from the moment I cast my eyes on the metaphoric title.
It is a book which I will definitely be reading again and again, and an excellent reference."
Email from Ramona Wadi
To download a copy of the review in Acrobat format, click this
link. For a
plain text version of this review please click the link.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Recent Books, review:
FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Volume 90 NO.1, January/February 2011, pp.
186-187.
"Armatta, a lawyer, journalist, human rights activist, and
expert on the Balkans, sat through three years of excruciating testimony in
The Hague for the first trial of a head of state since Admiral Karl Donitz
at Nuremburg--the trial of Slobodan Milošević for 66 counts of war crimes,
crimes against humanity, and genocide. By her own confession, she was
scarcely an impartial observer, having witnessed much of what served as the
basis for the charges, but she provides more than a fair analysis of the
proceedings' fumblings and ill-advised decisions. Hers is the front-row view
of a first-rate court reporter, giving the reader a TiVo-like version,
culled of dead space and repetition, that is still exhausting in its arduous
pace and detail. Diligently, she watched and recorded as the court probed
all three charges from Kosovo, back through the Croatian and Bosnian wars,
tediously piling up the evidence as Milošević bobbed and weaved. One comes
away half heartened by the effort to answer unspeakable cruelty and
suffering with justice but, in a way, more saddened by Milošević's slippery
success in persuading his partisans and many of his countrymen that they,
not he, were on trial, the victims of great power bullies. And then there is
the whimper with which it was all ended, by a heart attack that left him
prosecuted but unjudged."
Twilight of Impunity: The War Crimes Trial of
Slobodan Milošević. BY JUDITH ARMATTA. Duke University Press,
2010,576 pp. $39.95.
Follow this link
to FOREIGN AFFAIRS publication online.
Download a copy of the FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Recent Books
review here
.
For a
For a plain text version of this document please click the link.
William Pruitt, Elmira College, H-Genocide, August 2014.
H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
"Armatta pulls back the veil of ignorance by exposing the
ICTY, its prosecutors, judges, and amici curiae (friends of the court) to
the light, and the view we get is not always pretty. While some will be
inclined to reject her portrayal, in reality it is the only way to fully
understand these international courts. If we cannot accept the facts behind
the curtain, warts and all, then we should not promote the use of such
tribunals."
Read the full review
here or at this H-Net Online website. For a
plain text version of the document please click the link.
Sabrina P. Ramet, PhD., Professor of Political science at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), in Trondheim and a
senior associate of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.D:
International Dialogue, A Multidisciplinary Journal of World Affairs 3 2013
"As a record of the testimonies, tracking disclosures and
providing a summary of the case against Slobodan Milošević, Armatta is
unrivalled."
Read the full review
here
. For a plain
text version of this document please click the link.
James Gow, Professor, Kings College, Slavic Review, Vol.
70:4m, page 924.
"This book will rightly become a key reference in the literature both on
the war and the politics that surrounded Yugoslavia’s dissolution and on
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. It is the
product of Judith Armatta’s having sat through the trial as a legal analyst
and observer for the Coalition for International Justice. This is a
privilege that would not be available to the regular scholar whose other
university duties would not permit a research indulgence of this kind. That
community of scholars should—and will—be grateful, therefore, that Armatta
was able to do so because she has produced a massive resource that will save
many hours of investigation, even if this community does not, indeed, could
never, embrace absolutely everything associated with this book’s focus."
Read the full review
here
.
For a
plain text version of this document please click the link.
Law & Politics Book Review, sponsored by the Law and
Courts Section of the American Political Science Association, Reviewed by
Mark A. Drumbl, Washington & Lee University, School of Law. Volume 21, No.
4. pp 177-180.
"Judith Armatta, a human rights lawyer and journalist,
spent many days over nearly three years attending at Milošević's trial in
The Hague. TWILIGHT OF IMPUNITY emerges as the ensuing work product.
Although she modestly claims that TWILIGHT OF IMPUNITY is “not the
definitive trial record” (p.x), it definitely serves as the definitive book
about the trial.
"Armatta’s encyclopedic compendium is impeccably researched, meticulous,
detailed, prudent, and careful. It distinguishes itself as a must-read.
"Her chronology follows that of the trial. She begins with the Kosova part of
the indictment, then moves to Croatia, and then to Bosnia. She then explores
Milošević's defense, which was partial in the sense he never came to answer
for many of the charges leveled against him – in particular, that of
genocide at Srebrenica. Textually, Armatta’s work is accessible. It is
jargon-free, denuded of elliptical reasoning, and liberated from
nomenclature. Yet it still conveys the complexities of substantive law, the
improbabilities of securing convictions, and the often Sisyphean task of
proving facts as matters of law rather than accepting them as self-evident
happenings."
Go to this link
Law and Politics Book Review to read the full review.
For a
plain text version of this document please click the link.
Daniel Lemisch, Former US Department of Justice Resident
Legal Advisor to Serbia, January 11, 2011.
"I just finished Twilight of Impunity and have to say it
is one of the finest books of any kind I’ve ever read. Not only is it a
clear, readable account of the trial, but it’s the best description of the
events leading to the dissolution of Yugoslavia that I’ve come across.
Armatta’s explanation of the trial, the attorneys and the judges made me
feel as though I know them. Twilight of Impunity is a work that will stand
as one of the finest chronicles of that terrible time and the nascent
international criminal justice system’s attempt to address it."
S.R. Silverburg, Catawba College, Choice, v.
48, no. 5, January 2011 wrote this
review:
"To highlight the wide range of publications reviewed in
Choice, each month Choice
editors feature some noteworthy reviews from the current issue. Choice
is the newsletter of the academic section of the American Library
Association. This newsletter features a selection of noteworthy titles
published in Choice this month. Chosen by the Choice editors from
among the nearly 600 reviews published monthly, these titles stand out for
their excellence, timeliness, originality, or sheer reading pleasure."
"The breakup of the federated states of Yugoslavia, which began in 1991,
led to open, violent conflict between the different states and ethnic
groups. One byproduct was a policy of genocide initiated by the mostly
Christian Serbian forces against Kosovar Muslims. The president of Serbia
was Slobodan Milošević, who was also the titular head of its military forces
and ultimately the recipient of the sobriquet "Butcher of the Balkans."
Amatta, a lawyer, a journalist, a human rights advocate, and an activist,
took on the task of documenting the trial of Milošević before the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The
Hague. Milošević, who was indicted while president but arrested subsequent
to his removal from office, was brought before the Tribunal on 66 charges of
war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The trial's tales include
a horrendous unveiling of inhuman acts perpetrated by official and
unofficial Serbian forces against Kosovars. In the end, justice was denied
when in March 2006 Milošević died of a heart attack in his jail cell, which
was attached to the Tribunal. This is a definite source for the examination
of post-WW II human rights trials and post-conflict resolution institutions.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels."
Armatta, Judith. Twilight of impunity: the War Crimes Trial of
Slobodan Milošević. Duke University, 2010. 345p index afp ISBN
0-8223-4746-6, $39.95; ISBN 9780822347460, $39.95.48-2938 KZ1203 2009-51107
CIP
Toby Vogel reviewed three books, including
Twilight of Impunity. European Voice, January 9, 2010. Readers subscribe to the
online version.
"Three books examine the complex system of war-crimes
tribunals in the Balkans and further afield.
"Judith Armatta, a lawyer, reporter and human-rights campaigner, has written a detailed and thorough
account of the trial that is certain to answer more questions than any lay reader is ever likely to
have. As a record of the proceedings, and of the substance of Milošević's presumed crimes, "Twilight
of impunity" is invaluable."
Download the review as an Adobe Acrobat document.
For a
plain text version of this document
click this link.
Penny Booth is a law academic and an honorary research Fellow at the Centre for
the Study of the Child, the Family and the Law, University of Liverpool. She writes here in a personal
capacity.
Download her reivew of Twilight of Impunity, Times Higher Education,
December 23, 2010.
For a
plain text version of this document please click the link.
"Here, Armatta - a journalist, scholar and human rights lawyer who had a front-row seat
at the proceedings - trains her focus on the trial of Milosevicc itself rather than attempting to offer a
pure history of the conflicts in Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia.
“Nevertheless, indications of the many different versions of that history do emerge, and clearly the
complexities are huge.”
“Particularly useful is her commentary on the operational failings of trials of this nature. There is
good reason to hold such trials: to expose, explain, reveal and exonerate; to cleanse, exculpate and
hear versions of the truth. They are not, however, at all easy to carry out.”
Read the rest of the review
(May require registration)
Chuck Sudetic, author of
Blood and Vengeance: One Family’s Story of the War in Bosnia and
co-author of Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst
Criminals and the Culture of Impunity.
“In Twilight of Impunity, Judith Armatta has done
for the trial of Slobodan Milošević, 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.”
Paul R. Williams, Rebecca I. Grazier
Professor of Law and International Relations, American University
Washington College of Law
“Judith Armatta spent three incredible years with a front row seat
in the trial that many hope will signal a beginning of the end to
impunity. Through this book the reader is granted a rare privilege
to share Judith’s journey through the trial of Milošević. As such,
Twilight of Impunity serves as an
indispensable cornerstone to the historical record of the Yugoslav
conflict, and is a must read for anyone who seeks to understand how
and why genocide returned to Europe.”
Nina Bang-Jensen, former
Executive Director/Counsel, Coalition for International Justice
“As the only independent lawyer to have monitored and reported
regularly from the Milošević trial courtroom from its first day,
Judith Armatta has produced an unparalleled, firsthand account of
the first truly international war crimes trial of a national leader.
She captures the 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,
including Milošević, former world leaders, NATO officials, victims,
judges and prosecutors. A compelling and thorough source of
unconventional wisdom on the trial and its impact, this book must be
read by anyone hoping to understand the Balkans and the new era of
international war crimes trials.”