The foyer bristled with armed guards, pacing back and forth with their pistols holstered, their nightsticks bobbing on their hips with each step. I stepped through the first metal detector; I surrendered all of my possessions—even my drink of water—to the guards; I registered with the guard behind the desk, handing over my driver’s license to be meticulously copied; I passed through yet another metal detector, escorted all the way by yet another an armed guard. Only then was I allowed to enter that most revered sanctum: the ICTY’s main trial chamber—or the public gallery, at least.

I settled into a seat in the darkened room, separated from the trial chamber only by semi-darkened and soundproofed glass. I must admit, I found the occasion oddly exciting: yes, it was an every-day occurrence for the members of the court, the witnesses, the defendants, but it was a tremendous novelty for me—here I was, just metres away from an actual trial at the actual ICTY.

I was the only spectator. The hubbub from the beginning of the Karadžić trial had died down, the guard told me, and now not even he could draw capacity crowds. The guard’s handgun and nightstick belied a friendly and personable nature, and a palpable boredom: it was late afternoon by that time, and I had the feeling I was the only person who had turned up to the main trial chamber all day. He seemed to relish the conversation, and with the court seemingly occupied with procedural matters—almost as unintelligible as they were unexciting—I did too, finding them a welcome diversion from the anticlimactic proceedings. Almost as soon as we had eased into conversation, though, the sound from the courtroom—piped into the gallery through a series of speakers—cut out: the court had entered private session, to discuss matters unsuitable for us outsiders. So these were the moments that produced those reams of “(REDACTED)” in the court’s transcripts! I tried desperately to lip-read, but to no avail. “Courtroom three is still in open session, if you’d like to go there,” the guard ventured after a few minutes of awkward silence. Why not, I thought?

And so the pantomime began again. Another guard was called; my new friend couldn’t accompany me across the building, since to do so would be to leave the viewing gallery guarded by only the two guards with the metal detector—clearly, an unacceptable risk. Once the next guard arrived, it was through the metal detectors again, through the foyer, into a warren of corridors and stairs that led to the court’s offices for administrative staff. Eventually, we met yet another guard and, feeling more and more like a defendant, I was transferred into his supervision. He led me to this courtroom’s cramped viewing gallery, only two seats wide with one already occupied. My companion was a sharply dressed and silent man scribbling furiously in a notepad, who didn’t even look up to acknowledge my presence; I slipped on the translation headphones in the dark and sunk into my seat, hoping that this session would be more fruitful.

The trial I’d chanced upon was that of Vlastimir Đorđević, a Serbian on trial for the intimidation, murder and ethnic cleansing of Kosovan Albanians. Though Đorđević himself wasn’t present, a witness was undergoing cross-examination from the prosecution. The witness was a commander of the Serbian MUP (Ministarstvo Unutrašnjih Poslova, the Ministry of Internal Affairs) at the time of the massacre at Podujevo, in which nineteen Albanian civilians were murdered. The MUP allegedly covered up the massacre, perpetrated by the Serbian paramilitary group the Scorpions, but this witness ran rings around the prosecutor and easily deflected the tame cross-examination—denying even those statements which he had made on record, and generally pursuing a strategy of obstruction and frustration.

It left me feeling disheartened, and no more confident of the ICTY’s effectiveness than I had been after seeing first Slobodan Milošević and then Radovan Karadžić succeed in protracting their trials and frustrating their prosecutors. Nevertheless, it was a tremendously interesting—and enjoyable—experience. There’s a reason, I think, that television is filled with so many courtroom dramas: here, otherwise dry and sterile judgements come alive, made flesh by the uncertainty, the unpredictability, the adversarial sparring between prosecution and defence. Before long I found myself rooting for the prosecutor as though I was at a boxing match, having to resist the urge to cheer whenever he landed a blow or gasp when he himself was on the ropes. It makes for engaging viewing, but the real draw was the realisation that history was unfolding and being documented before my very eyes, that these people were determining the truth, the truth that would enter the annals of history. It may only have been a minor event in a minor trial, but it didn’t matter: I was there.