Bang to Rights

Well done. I'm not normally one for the death penalty but for genocide it's different, "Come on Mr Karadice, yes, stand over there by the wall. No there won't be a trial, yes we're pretty sure about this, no you can't recite one of your poems."

Perhaps that might be seen as a bit harsh by some. Not really, why waste his time sitting around in a jail he's never going to leave and why waste our time and money on keeping him. But whatbout if he weren't guilty; that's not really an option.

His guilt is manifest and in his own words, “Do unto them now as they shall surely do to you tomorrow.”

This is taken from Anthony Loyd's article in the Times "No birdsong breaks the silence in the woods haunted by the ghosts of mass murder"

In the last days of the war I saw something in the yawning doorway of a derelict house outside Sanski Most, in western Bosnia, that 13 years later still zips through my mind untouched by time. The garden outside was an overgrown tangle of grass and a hot afternoon sun bleached the colour from the walls of the building, earlier burnt by advancing Serb troops. A sweet stench weighted the breeze. By then I had seen hundreds of bodies, most Muslim, most civilian, murdered out of combat by knife or bullet. Even so, I was unprepared for what waited in that house.

For a few moments after walking through the door I could not understand what I was looking at. The walls and ceiling appeared splattered in black, undefinable lumps, the floor was concealed by a gateau of twisted limbs and swollen torsos. It was as if an abstract charcoal sketch by Goya had come to life. Slowly, as my eyes became accustomed to the light, I could make out that there were 12 bodies. Then I saw their heads, or what was left of them. For these 12 men had been killed with a sledgehammer.

Before and since I have seen greater numbers of victims of execution. But the level of effort and involvement and hatred required to shepherd 12 men into a room, then smash in their heads with a hammer, left more of an impression than the horror of the mutilation itself and transcended the mere scale of murder.

After that a simple bullet standing against a wall seems the easiest and best solution.

A Post Scriptum:

Rather than my solution maybe it would be better to go through the whole rigmarole of a trial, to finally nail this down, to show to the world he is guilty and to bear testament to all the victims who died in this holocaust.

This thought came to me as I watched the helicopter carrying Karadice land at the prison in the Netherlands. You can try to squirm to get out ogf this but you won't.