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I thought I'd raise this issue here so that others can give their opinion, since otherwise the only discussion is on the Admin noticeboard. I made changes to remove references to the Karadzic trial that have since been reverted, and I then noticed that this has been an ongoing issue, recently involving User:JamesJohnson2 and User:Philip Cross.

The issue is whether Milosevic's supposed exoneration by the ICTY (which is supposed to follow from the ICTY's judgement in the case of Radovan Karadzic) should be mentioned in this article.

The key text is from http://www.icty.org/x/cases/karadzic/tjug/en/160324_judgement.pdf (page 1303), as follows:

"based on the evidence before the Chamber regarding the diverging interests that emerged between the Bosnian Serb and Serbian leaderships during the conflict and in particular, Milošević’s repeated criticism and disapproval of the policies and decisions made by the Accused and the Bosnian Serb leadership,11027 the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan."

My view is that that:

• The Karadzic trial is not the Milosevic trial. The page "Trial of Slobodan Milosevic" should focus on information about his trial. The purpose of the article is not to discuss whether Milosevic was or was not guilty of the crimes.

• Concluding the "Trial" section with the line: "He has been exonerated by ICJ from the charges." is factually incorrect. As stated in the "Background" section, the charges against Milosevic were manifold, in Bosnia and Kosovo. The judgement that it is unproven that Milosevic agreed a common plan with Karadzic does not mean that he was exonerated of the charges. He has not even been exonerated of agreeing a common plan (since he was not on trial), let alone exonerated of the charges. And he certainly has not been exonerated of the charges relating to Kosovo.

In any case, at the moment the article uses the ICTY's judgement on one issue - Milosevic's collusion with Bosnian Serbs - to give the impression that Milosevic has been exonerated of all charges. This should be amended.

Danielstn (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(also seen at ANI) I agree there are issues both about relying on primary sources (ie the ICTY judgment itself) and some other potential sources and about relevance, given that the page is about Milosevic's trial, not his guilt or otherwise. That said, as long as the information is presented accurately, eg without the use of words such as "exoneration" and making clear it is in a different case and on a specific point, it seems sufficiently relevant to be worth noting at least. As for sources, B92 and RFERL were cited with approval at ANI as sources that justify excluding this info. I'm not sure they're any better or worse than RT or Telesur, which were cited in favour of inclusion. N-HH talk/edits 07:30, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, the page has been changed again, by User:RudiLefkowitz, in the opposite direction that I suggested, including the text: "the Chamber concluded that there was not enough evidence to find Milošević guilty of the war crimes and crimes against humanity in which he had allegedly been complicit". This is not accurate (see my points above). The edit summary reads "Sources are valid, academically sound - do not remove". I don't disagree that the ICTY's judgement of Karadzic is a reliable document, but it is being misrepresented. I've made compromise changes that keep a reference to this source, and adds statements to make it clear that the ICTY did not arrive at a verdict in this trial (which was not clear before). I've removed what I consider to be misrepresentations of the source text.Danielstn (talk) 13:27, 15 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

JamesJohnson2 In reference to User:Danielstn comment, his statement makes absolutely no sense for following reasons:

• Accusations brought against Slobodan Milosevic's and his alleged crimes are present in the article as they should be, as they are part of information related to him. Therefore it follows that any court findings about this alleged crimes, should also be present on the page. If we were to follow his logic we should also remove allegations against him as well which is ridiculous.
• While the trial was not about him, the court has investigated his involvement in Bosnian crimes and has found that there is no evidence which supports the claim that he has participated in the alleged crimes. Therefore this relates to the allegations against his person and should be present on the page.
• We are here to present the facts not to hide them, and it is a fact that "International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia" has investigated Slobodan Milosevic crimes during Bosnian war and has found that there is not enough evidence to support this accusations. As a Wikipedia editor you should present the facts not hide them, regardless of whether you like them or not. After all we are not here to say one side of the story.
• If you want to challenge the courts findings go to court do not pretend that they do not exist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.175.59.143 (talk) 08:52, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(response to User:JamesJohnson2) Responding to factual elements of the first two comments (which make the subsequent two redundant):

• "any court findings about this alleged crimes, should also be present on the page." Fine, but then it should make it very clear what this judgement said about which crimes. The way you've written the article makes it seem that he has been exonerated of all charges. This is categorically untrue, even of the Bosnian crimes, and very obviously untrue of the Kosovo and Croatian crimes.
• "the court has investigated his involvement in Bosnian crimes and has found that there is no evidence which supports the claim". This is also untrue. The court judged that no evidence was presented in this particular trial that supported the allegation. The court did not judge that this evidence does not exist, and the prosecution were not even trying to prove this allegation.

I'm happy to hear your thoughts on compromise edits that take these facts into account, but the current version of the article is extremely misleading and I will revert the changes if you don't want to do anything about it. My changes already recognised the existence of the Karadzic judgement, and that apparently wasn't enough of a compromise for you, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to what should be done.

Danielstn (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

(response to User: Danielstn) :

You should leave the comments as they are, as they are both correct and academically sound.

In your modifications you have made mention that Milosevic case has been covered by "other trials", however you have failed to state what the findings of those trials were. To put it bluntly, that would be the same as sport presenter saying that there was soccer match between England and Germany at the world cup final with out informing anyone about the result.

Furthermore in your modification you make a false claim that findings were only about "collaboration between Radovan Karadžić and Milošević". This is not true, you should read the finding in article 3406. on pg. 1303 of ICTY report a little bit better, as it clearly states that court could not find enough evidence to support the claims that Slobodan Milosevic was involved in the "common plan". "Common plan" to which they are referring to, is outlined on pages 1294 to 1306 and covers all the crimes allegedly committed by Serbs in Bosnia during Bosnian war. ^[1]

Also it is untrue that no evidence about Milosevic's involvement was presented during this trial as in the same article it is clearly stated that Milosevic was in fact opposed to "common plan". Court would never make such claim with no evidence being presented.

Finally please quit trying to hide facts, we are here to present facts not to hide them.

JamesJohnson2 (talk) 16:18, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I made these minor edits to deal with the most immediately obvious problems here. There are others of course. I know it's a vain hope, but perhaps everyone could try to put their personal opinions about the topic to one side, and avoid using this page to argue about whether Milosevic has been maligned and traduced, or got away with more than he deserved. If you want to add your views to a forum about the Yugoslav wars, I am sure there are plenty of them out there. N-HH talk/edits 20:19, 16 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is not my personal opinion here but opinion of ICTY which the other side is shamefully trying to delete. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 01:49, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

People's opinions tend inform how they would prefer to see information presented and what they declare to be unimpeachable "facts". Given that you appear to see this as being about "sides", that you have edited on nothing but Yugoslav/Serb-related issues and that you appear to have missed that most people are not talking about necessarily "deleting" the material in its entirety but about how best to present it accurately, my comment above seems fair enough. N-HH talk/edits 11:09, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I should clarify the statement about sides, it refers to sides of the argument we are having and nothing else, argument was heated up long before I got involved. As far as facts go, if something is black I can not interpret it as being white, and it seems that opposing sides view is that you can as long as someone says that it is (and yes I do get upset when somebody tries that). I do not mind people modifying the article, as long as what they modify is correct and not attempt to hide facts, as you have probably noticed I did not delete your last two modifications as I believed they were somewhat fair. Modifications done previously by users who have started this argument have been just about deleting the above mentioned information by any means necessary and nothing else. Finally I would like to state that my personal interests are not part of this discussion, my arguments are, please address them if you wish to continue. JamesJohnson2 (talk) 13:00, 17 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In response to User:JamesJohnson2's comment "Finally please quit trying to hide facts, we are here to present facts not to hide them.", I've added some more facts to the end of the page - 1) that the trial itself returned no verdict on Milosevic's guilt, 2) that the Karadzic trial only dealt with the Bosnian war, and 3) included an extra line from the passage that JamesJohnson2 quoted. Danielstn (talk) 13:40, 18 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Interpretation of primary sources

Further to the above discussion, User:JamesJohnson2 is repeatedly reverting attempts to accurately represent what the ICTY judgment in the Karadzic case says, to the point where it is becoming disruptive. Others, myself included, have acquiesced in their insistence that we include details from a primary source, relating to a separate case, not only in the body of the article but in the lead. You'd have thought that this acceptance of something which hits up against WP rules and practice on multiple levels was accomodation enough, but they are insisting that this page should say that judgment ruled there was "no evidence Milosevic committed war crimes". As has been repeatedly pointed out, without reliable and authoritative secondary sources confirming this interpretation of the judgment, this page simply cannot say that. Here is what the Karadzic judgment says at p1303, as cited:

• "based on the evidence before the Chamber ... the Chamber is not satisfied that there was sufficient evidence presented in this case to find that Slobodan Milošević agreed with the common plan [to expel non-Serbs]".

Anything directly sourced to the judgment cannot say any more than that. FWIW the user's repeated reverts of attempts to limit the text here to that phrasing have also reverted attempts to maintain consistent date formats and, even still, use of accents in Milosevic's name, hence are doubly disruptive. N-HH talk/edits 11:54, 4 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]