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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Elizabeth Neuffer

Aired December 08, 2001 - 10:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN ANCHOR: Pashtun tribal chiefs say Taliban spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has vanished from Kandahar. They say he slipped out of the city overnight. Afghanistan's new interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is vowing to find Omar and Osama bin Laden and deliver them to international justice.

As for where bin Laden might be, anti-Taliban fighters say there is new evidence that he is holed up in eastern Afghanistan's Tora Bora region and commanding troop movements there. A senior Taliban commander stays intercepted al Qaeda radio transmissions spoke of a "tall man on horseback" called "The Sheik," which is an al Qaeda reference to bin Laden.

Joining me now to discuss how bin Laden and Omar might be prosecuted if they are caught is Elizabeth Neuffer, a reporter for the "Boston Globe." Her book, "The Key To My Neighbor's House" is about the justice that would come to those who committed crimes against humanity.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

ELIZABETH NEUFFER, REPORTER, "BOSTON GLOBE": It's wonderful to be here.

MESERVE: I know you've looked intensively at Rwanda and Bosnia and the situations there. Is there any analogy to be drawn between what happened in those countries and Afghanistan?

NEUFFER: Yes, there are, in fact, many, many parallels, Jeanne. The strongest parallel of all is that the need for a country when it's recovering from horrible tragedies of this kind to have a system in place where individual guilt can be attributed as opposed to collective guilt. This is essential for countries wrestling with the legacy of ethnic hatreds as both Bosnia and Rwanda had. And as you know, in both of those countries, there were U.N. ad hoc war crimes tribunals created for precisely that purpose.

MESERVE: Are there institutions in Afghanistan, which could be used to bring people to justice?

NEUFFER: At the moment, there is absolutely nothing, Jeanne. I just got off the phone, in fact, this morning with some U.N. officials discussing this very topic. And everything in the country is in ruins and plus, we have the very difficult question of we have a government that's taking over, that itself, you know, has a history and a past that people are going to want to explore and are going to feel needs to be reckoned with.

So there's going to be a short-term period of recovery in Afghanistan. I think then in the longer term, the nation is going to have to address questions of who committed what to whom and when.

MESERVE: And what do they do about the institutional problem? Do they have to turn to international tribunals, if for instance, Omar and Osama bin Laden are indeed taken into custody?

NEUFFER: Well, as you know, President Bush has proposed military tribunals and I'm presuming one of the hopes would be that if an American forces somehow got their hands on Osama bin Laden or one of his top aides, that that could be a possible forum. I think that in fact what we should hope for is something different. I think we should hope for some kind of ad hoc tribunal, possibly even an extension of the existing tribunal in The Hague granted temporary powers and authority to investigate the crimes that occur in Afghanistan.

There, we have an institution that's up and running and ready to go that can, you know, apply the international rules of law to the al Qaeda henchmen.

MESERVE: As you know, this Bush proposal for military tribunals has been tremendously controversial. How do you feel about it?

NEUFFER: I am completely opposed to it, Jeanne. I have yet to hear a really strong and compelling argument for it. I keep hearing that it's being created for the interest of international security, but certainly, all we have to do is look at these two existing ad hoc war crimes tribunals to know that it is impossible for national intelligence to inform the trial without necessarily being revealed by it.

These are good mechanisms where, in fact, you know, continental information could guide judges but not necessarily have to come to out in public in a public hearing.

I think the greater issue of national security that we have to focus on right now, is how America and American foreign policy looks to the world. The more open and transparent the justice we provide, which is certainly what we have always advocated around the world, the more likely we are to sort of take away any argument that bin Laden's propagandists out there might use against us down the road.

MESERVE: Elizabeth Neuffer, thanks. We'll see how it all develops.

NEUFFER: Thank you, Jeanne.

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