A Singaporean Judge at the World's First War Crimes Court
In 2001, a Singaporean judge flew to The Hague to help try war criminals. He was the first international judge Singapore ever sent to a United Nations court. His name was Amarjeet Singh.
This is part of my retelling of “50 Years of Singapore and the United Nations” (Tommy Koh, Li Lin Chang, Joanna Koh, 2015, ISBN: 978-9814713030).
Chapter 18 is written by Amarjeet Singh himself. He shares what it was like to serve at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This was the world’s first independent war crimes court. And his story covers everything from the bloody history behind the conflict to the courtroom moments that stayed with him.
How a Singapore Judge Ended Up at The Hague
In June 2001, the UN General Assembly elected Amarjeet Singh as an Ad Litem Judge at the ICTY. The tribunal had been set up in 1993 and needed more judges. Singh was the first person from Singapore to hold a position like this at any UN court.
His nomination was built on two things. First, Singapore’s judiciary had a strong international reputation. Second, the Singapore government wanted to show its commitment to international rule of law.
Singh arrived in The Hague alongside four other new judges. All four of them were women, brought in to fix a gender imbalance at the tribunal. They came from Canada, Mali, Japan, and the Czech Republic.
What Was the ICTY?
The ICTY was a temporary tribunal based in The Hague. It had two branches. The prosecution side. And the judicial side with three trial chambers, an appeals chamber, and a registry to manage cases. Every accused person got a lawyer, paid for by the tribunal.
The tribunal could try people for some of the worst crimes humans commit. Violations of the Geneva Convention. War crimes. Genocide. Murder, abductions, rape, deportations, ethnic cleansing, torture, destruction of mosques and churches. The full list is grim.
But why Yugoslavia? That requires some history.
The Roots of the Yugoslav Wars
Yugoslavia was a federation of six states: Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Montenegro. Kosovo was a Serbian-controlled territory with a large Albanian population and Serbian troops on the ground.
The trouble goes back centuries. The Ottoman Empire invaded Serbia in 1389. Turkish settlers moved in. The Ottomans stayed for hundreds of years. For Serbs, the anniversary of that defeat became the most important date on their calendar.
Fast forward to the late 1980s. Yugoslavia had been fairly stable under President Tito’s brand of socialism since the 1960s. But then Slobodan Milosevic came to power in Serbia in 1989. He pushed extreme Serbian nationalism. He wanted a bigger, unified Serbian state. He used ethnicity, religion, and culture as tools.
Bosnia-Herzegovina was the pressure point. It had a mixed population. Orthodox Bosnians, Bosnian Muslims (called “Bosniaks” by the Orthodox side, as a kind of insult), and Croat Christians.
Slovenia and Croatia broke away first. Bosnia-Herzegovina followed in 1992, after a referendum. In response, the Bosnian Serb minority formed their own state, the Republika Srpska, with Radovan Karadzic as president and General Ratko Mladic running the military.
War broke out. NATO eventually bombed to stop it. And the war crimes were staggering. Sarajevo. Srebrenica. Kosovo. Thousands of people killed. Milosevic, Karadzic, and Mladic became some of the most infamous names in modern war crimes history.
What Made This Court Different
Singh makes an important point about what set the ICTY apart from earlier tribunals. After World War II, the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals tried German and Japanese officers. But those were military tribunals. They relied mostly on written statements taken by investigators. Trials were wrapped up quickly, often within a year.
The ICTY was different. It was a civilian court. It had modern courtroom technology. Live notes appeared on personal monitors for judges and lawyers. Voice translation happened in real time. Documents were shared through proper discovery processes. And here is the big one: trial proceedings were broadcast live to the former Balkan states.
The goal was not just justice, but justice that everyone could see happening.
Groundbreaking Legal Decisions
The ICTY set many precedents that shaped international criminal law.
Early on, it ruled that the Yugoslav conflict was international, not just a civil war. That mattered a lot for which laws applied.
In its very first case, a man named Dusko Tadic challenged the tribunal’s right to exist. He argued it violated his country’s sovereignty. The tribunal ruled that it had legitimate jurisdiction under the UN Security Council, and it could not look outside its own founding statute.
Singh personally tried a case involving forced deportations, detentions, and torture. Bosnian-Serbian paramilitary officers, with help from local Bosnians, had been seizing Muslim and Croat areas in Herzegovina since 1992. They would grab territories, hold rigged elections with their own candidates, and then claim the occupation was legitimate.
The tribunal also expanded the law in important ways. It ruled that rape could count as torture or sexual slavery under international law. In some cases, it could even amount to genocide.
One of the trickiest legal questions was “Command Responsibility.” If a military or government leader is far away from where the crimes happen, are they still responsible? In 1998, the ICTY said a superior was responsible for the same acts as their subordinates. But in 2008, in the Celebici case, the tribunal changed course. It ruled that a distant superior was only responsible for failing to prevent or punish crimes, not for the crimes themselves. The specific facts of each case mattered.
The Voices of Witnesses
Some of the most powerful parts of Singh’s chapter are the words from witnesses. These were survivors who had waited years to tell their stories. The judges listened patiently.
Singh shares several quotes that stuck with him:
“The war brought a great misfortune on everyone. I was not so sorry for myself as I was for some others as I looked around.”
“What kind of a curse had befallen us?”
“I was praying if the first shell hit Samac again that morning it should hit me.”
“In fear, a day can last as long as a year.”
“In a communal war you tend to be afraid even of your own friends.”
“Falling shells do not discriminate between soldiers and civilians.”
And the one that captures the whole tragedy: “Only Muslims were Yugoslavians. Serbs were Serbs. Croats were Croats.”
Results and Numbers
By the time Singh wrote this chapter, the ICTY had indicted 161 people. Of those, 141 cases were done. Sentences ranged from 5 to 40 years. No death penalty. People from all sides got convicted: Croatians, Bosnian Serbs, and Muslims.
Singh visited the prison facilities. They were in a wing of a Dutch prison, maintained to UN standards. Prisoners could have reading material. Milosevic had neat stacks of maybe a hundred books on his cell floor. Prisoners got limited phone calls to their families. After sentencing, they could choose to serve their time in approved countries willing to accept them.
Lessons Learned
Singh highlights some problems that the international community should think about.
First, delays. Some countries were slow to arrest people who had been indicted. Others dragged their feet sending evidence to prosecutors. The UN Security Council has the power to sanction countries for this, but it does not always use it. This problem matters a lot for the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC).
Singh points to a real example. In November 2014, the ICC dropped all charges against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta for crimes against humanity. Why? Witnesses had been tampered with, and Kenya refused to hand over requested evidence. The principle of “no impunity” for powerful people was at risk.
Second, too many charges. Milosevic faced 66 charges. His trial dragged on so long that he died of poor health before it was finished. All the work of the trial chamber was wasted. Another accused, Vojislav Seselj, got too sick to continue and was released in 2014. Singh suggests that prosecutors should focus on the three most serious charges and drop the rest. Speed matters.
What I Take Away From This Chapter
Amarjeet Singh’s story is personal and honest. He does not hide behind legal jargon. He shares the witness quotes. He talks about visiting prison cells. He gives you a feel for what it was actually like to sit on a bench and judge people for the worst crimes imaginable.
The ICTY was not perfect. Trials were slow. Some accused died or got sick before verdicts came in. Countries did not always cooperate.
But it built something that did not exist before: a real, independent, transparent international war crimes court. It created legal precedents that the permanent ICC now uses. It showed that you could broadcast trials to the people who suffered and say: this is what justice looks like.
And in the middle of all that history, there was a judge from Singapore. A man who started his career as a young lawyer in the 1960s, worked under the legendary David Marshall, rose through Singapore’s courts, and ended up at The Hague trying people for genocide and ethnic cleansing.
For a small country with no direct connection to the Balkans, that is a remarkable contribution to international justice.
About the Author
Amarjeet Singh started his legal career in 1962 as an Assistant Official Assignee and Assistant Public Trustee. He became a Magistrate, State Coroner, and District Judge. From 1968 to 1991, he practiced criminal law, first at the firm of David Marshall (Singapore’s first Chief Minister), and later at Amarjeet Rubin and Partners. He was appointed Judicial Commissioner in the Supreme Court from 1991 to 2000. After retirement, he served as a judge at the ICTY in The Hague from 2001 to 2005. On returning to Singapore, he was made Senior Counsel and became a Consultant at KhattarWong LLP.