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September 24, 2001

Salon: "Modern democracies have perfectly

Salon: "Modern democracies have perfectly adequate justice systems for dealing with terrorists," says William Schabas, a leading international law scholar and director of the Irish Center for Human Rights in Galway. "We track them down, catch them, bring them to trial and impose fit punishment. That is what the United States and the United Kingdom did with those responsible for the Lockerbie crash, and for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. It is what the U.N. is doing for those accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda." Indeed, says Schabas, "How much more healthy it is for democracy that Milosevic be judged by an international court rather than murdered by a cruise missile aimed at his home."