Oh dear... Mea culpa, Wolfgang. Apologies.

On the question of ICTY v ICJ there is a distinct difference but I expessed it misleadingly. The ICJ was established by the UN, acting as a community of nations, to resolve disputes between states. All states accepted its authority and on the whole the court has been respected - notwithstanding a tendency among more powerful states (notably the US) to ignore its findings.

The ICTY is an ad hoc tribunal and a poor second-best to the principle of a treaty-based permanent international penal tribunal that many UN member states had worked towards in the 1950s and onwards. The idea floundered because the great powers would not agree to surrnender any sovereignty to such an institution.

When the present tribunal was first mooted, not by the community of nations but the UN Security Council, specialists in international law could see no legal basis. By the time the UNSC came forward with Resolution 827, cited by Wolfgang, they had found their legal basis in a broad interpretation of the UN Charter (chapter VII).

This and adoption of a process that avoided any need for treaty-ratification etc was widely seen as opportunistic. But no-one minded much because the powerful players were happy. However one consequence of confining the tribunal's jurisdiction to specified issues was that strong countries could impose their ideas of justice on small nations while holding themselves aloof from answerability to any institution beyond their own borders.

On the question of deaths in custody, I remembered the figure as eight, but I might be wrong. In any case I should correct another error on that point. The earlier death this month was not of an indictee but someone already convicted. He had been returned to ICTY custody from prison to give evidence as a witness.

I should have made clear that my point about deaths in custody was not to imply foul play but to question the interminable processes involved both at the Hague and Arusha (the Rwanda tribunal). Surely no-one in his right mind could feel comfortable with the present instituions and processes.

(I may say by the way, Wolfgang, that I an deeply uneasy about victors' justice in all its manifestations. Who could say that Jodl's execution after WW2 made the world a safer place? And the Tokio tribunal, of course, was worse than Nuremburg.)