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Taheri On The Importance Of UN Arrest Warrants

August 14, 2010 · Mustapha Hamoui

Amir Taheri:

some might wonder what is point of issuing warrants that cannot be enforced.The answer is that arrest warrants issued by the ICC or similar international tribunals carry a political, and some might say even a moral, weight that cannot be ignored.
Right now some 30 such warrants still remain pending, among them Ratko Mladic, the Serbian general who organised the massacre of Muslims in Srebrenica. However, many arrest warrants are enforced after many years. Mladic’s partner in crime Radovan Karadic was picked up after 12 years of successful hiding.

In other words, it doesn’t matter if the Lebanese state doesn’t have the ability to arrest would-be Hezbollah suspects. The fact that there’s a warrant is damning in its own right.