John Laughland

Whenever a head of state or government faces trial these days, human rights activists say the event is unprecedented. Slobodan Milosevic’s trial was "ground-breaking"; the conviction of Jean Kambanda of Rwanda was "historic"; the trial of Charles Taylor of Liberia was "a break with the past".

Slobodan Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The former president of Serbia had always argued that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had command of the Bosnian Serb army, a claim that has now been upheld by the ICJ.