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U.S. DEPORTS TWO SREBRENICA MASSACRE SUSPECTS TO BOSNIA

July 5, 2006 Comments off

UNITED STATES DEPORTS TWO SERBS WANTED FOR SREBRENICA GENOCIDE

50 Bosnian women, relatives of victims of the Srebrenica massacre gather seen here holding a banner with the 8106 names of the victims in front of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, in February 2006. The United States deported to Bosnia two Bosnian Serbs wanted by a local court on charges of genocide committed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, an official said.(AFP/ANP/File/Ilvy Njiokiktjien)SARAJEVO – The United States deported to Bosnia two Bosnian Serbs wanted by a local court on charges of genocide committed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, officials said.

“The United States authorities deported today two persons and handed them over to Bosnia-Hercegovina’s prosecutors’ office,” the prosecutors’ office said in a statement.

The statement identified the two only as Zdravko B. and Goran B. adding that they were “suspected of participation in war crimes and genocide committed in July 1995 in Srebrenica.” Their identities were revealed by the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina. They are: Goran Bencun and Zdravko Bozic [source].

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior police officer told AFP that the two were “Bosnian Serbs” who were “handed over to Bosnian police at the Sarajevo airport around noon (1000 GMT).”

The US embassy here could not comment immediately.

The July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces is the worst massacre in Europe since World War II and the first legally established case of genocide in Europe after the Holocaust.

The atrocity became a symbol of brutality of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, which claimed over 100,000 lives.

It was qualified as an act of genocide by the UN war crimes court in The Hague.

Court of Bosnia-HerzegovinaEleven Bosnian Serbs are currently on trial before the Sarajevo-based Court of Bosnia-Hercegovina (link) for killing more than 1,000 Bosniak civilians in a single day during the massacre. They are facing genocide charges.

The Srebrenica massacre is at the center of genocide charges against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic, both wanted by the UN tribunal.

The two, believed to be hiding in Serb-controlled part of Bosnia and in Serbia, remain on the run almost 11 years since the Srebrenica massacre.

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BOSNIA OPENS SREBRENICA GENOCIDE TRIAL

May 10, 2006 Comments off

Bosnia war crimes court opens first genocide trial

SARAJEVO – Bosnia’s war crimes court on Tuesday launched the trial of 11 Bosnian Serbs charged over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosniaks, its first genocide trial since it opened last year.
The former army officers and special policemen are accused of killing over 1,000 Bosniak men aged between 16 and 60 while they were trying to escape the eastern United Nations-protected enclave on July 13, 1995.
Prosecutor Ibro Bulic said 8 of the men fired their machine guns at the prisoners, one threw hand grenades at them and another reloaded the ammunition.
The victims were first buried in a nearby mass grave and transferred to Glogova and Zeleni Jadar mass grave sites two weeks later in order to hide the crime, Bulic said. Some bodies were found after the 1992-95 war.
“The prosecution will ask the court to declare these men guilty so that a small step towards meeting justice can be made,” Bulic said in his introductory remarks.
Milenko Trifunovic, one of the men accused of firing his machine gun, and Milos Stupar, commanders of two special police squads engaged in the operation, were charged with individual criminal responsibility for failing to intervene and protect the prisoners.
The 11 accused were arrested last year and all have pleaded not guilty to the charges.Their indictment brings to 36 the number of those charged for the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague has also charged 19 people for the massacre. Six have been convicted and nine are on trial or awaiting trial.
The masterminds, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, remain at large nearly 11 years after being indicted.

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BAD MAN OF THE MILLENIUM

April 30, 2006 Comments off
Slobodan Miloševic – Bad man of the millenium

Author: Marko Attila Hoare

Comment on Milosevic following his death in prison, written for the Open Democracy website by the author of How Bosnia Armed

Srebrenica Genocide: In July 1995, Slobodan Milosevic forces massacred over 8,000 Bosniaks in so called UN Safe Heaven Zone of Srebrenica.Slobodan Milošević represented the last gasp of a discredited type of politics, but he was also the harbinger of a new one – not just in the former Communist East, but also in the West. His policies ensured that Communist dictatorship would not go peacefully to its grave in Yugoslavia, as it had in most of Eastern Europe, but would instead create a spectacular conflagration, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of innocent victims before burning itself out in total defeat. Yet despite this record, or perhaps in some sense because of it, Milošević’s cause became the cause of all those across Europe and the world – conservatives of the left and conservatives of the right – for whom the idea of progress under liberal capitalism was and remains anathema.

Milošević deliberately promoted the break-up of Yugoslavia and the independence of Croatia and Slovenia; he championed free-market reforms; he struggled to build good relations with the West, even supporting the US in the 1991 Gulf conflict; he waged wars against sovereign independent states without a mandate from the UN Security Council; and he initially endorsed the activities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The Western alliance was very slow to confront him, treating him more as a partner and collaborator than as an enemy, right up until the late 1990s. As an anti-imperialist, Milošević was no more successful, and was considerably less sincere, than he was as a Great Serbian nationalist. Yet it is not the real historical figure, rather the myth of Milošević, that has made him a hero to so many of those opposed to the ‘new world order’: he was the conservative’s Communist; the Communist’s champion of free-market reform; the peacenik’s warmonger; the UN-worshipper’s defier of international law. In sum, a paradoxical poster-boy for an anti-modern coalition comprised of opposites.

The real Milošević – as opposed to the myth created by his Western admirers – cannot be understood without reference to the long-term Serbian and Yugoslav historical context. Milošević was the leader of a secessionist Serbian rebellion against a Titoist Yugoslavia that had kept Serbia in check. Josip Broz Tito’s Communist-led Partisans, who fought against the Nazi occupiers of Yugoslavia, founded their federal Yugoslav state on the ruins of the Third Reich – but also on the ruins of Great Serbian nationalism. The Partisans were essentially a west-Yugoslav movement whose strongest wing was in Croatia: its leader, Tito, was a Croat, and the Communist Party of Croatia mobilised more Partisans than any other section of the Yugoslav Communist organisation. The most important source of Partisan manpower was the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia – but they fought under the banners of a free Croatia and a free Bosnia within a Yugoslav union of equals, and against the goal of a Great Serbia that was being championed by the Partisans’ anti-Communist rivals – the royalist Chetniks. The latter’s bastion was in Serbia. It was only with massive Soviet assistance that the Partisans were able to conquer Serbia and defeat the Chetniks, and in doing so, the Partisans cut Serbia down to size: countries considered by many Serbs to be ‘Serb lands’ – Bosnia, Macedonia and Montenegro – were established as republics in their own right, while Vojvodina and Kosovo were made autonomous entities within Serbia. From the 1960s, Tito’s regime moved Yugoslavia further from the centralist constitutional model that Serb politicians had traditionally favoured, toward a semi-confederacy in which not just the republics, but the autonomous provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo, increasingly behaved like sovereign entities outside the control of Belgrade. It was this ‘anti-Serb’ constitutional order that Milošević set out to destroy.

Milošević was a creature of the Titoist Communist system who rebelled against the system. He pursued an independent Serbian political line that was at variance with the wishes of other Yugoslavs, tearing apart the fragile Titoist system that depended upon consensus and compromise for its functioning; he undermined and destroyed federal institutions; and from mid-1990 he pursued the policy of expelling Croatia and Slovenia from Yugoslavia. The new Serbian constitution promulgated by Milošević in 1990s declared the ‘independence’ of Serbia and its right to pursue its own international relations; in March 1991, Milošević effectively seceded from Yugoslavia, declaring Serbia would no longer respect the authority of the Yugoslav Presidency; in May 1991, Milošević decapitated Yugoslavia, by blocking the election of Croatia’s Stipe Mesic as Yugoslav president, thereby leaving the country without a functioning executive. Yet all this was done in the name of defending ‘Yugoslavia’. In attempting to carve out new Serbian borders, Milošević attempted to merge Titoism with Great Serbian nationalism, by establishing a ‘new Yugoslavia’ that would be composed entirely of Serb and Montenegrin entities as defined by Milošević’s ‘socialist’ ideologue Mihailo Marković in October 1991, this meant Serbia, Montenegro and an additional Serb unit made up of ‘Serb’ lands conquered from Croatia and Bosnia – Titoist and Yugoslav in form but Great Serbian in content.

In seeking to reconcile these irreconcilables, Milošević fell between two stools, for the young people of Serbia were unwilling to fight and die for such confused goals, in a ‘Yugoslav’ army that was neither genuinely Yugoslav, nor pursuing real, open Serb-national goals. Wracked with desertion, the military forces of Serbia and the Yugoslav People’s Army were rescued from defeat in Croatia only by Western diplomacy – not for the last time, the ‘anti-imperialist’ side was saved by the ‘imperialists’. In Bosnia, Milošević’s Bosnian Serb satellites pursued an equally contradictory goal – seeking to conquer Bosnia and secede from it at the same time. The Serb genocide of Bosnian Muslims and Croats provoked a powerful Bosnian resistance, while the dirty character of the war waged by the Serbs, and the confusion over their goals and their borders, again ensured a Serb defeat.

Despite the readiness of John Major’s British Conservative government, François Mitterrand’s French Socialist regime and Bill Clinton’s vacillating Democratic administration, to collude in Milošević’s aggression and genocide, the world-wide revulsion caused by the latter eventually mobilised a powerful global counter-current uniting principled opinion from across the political spectrum. The Srebrenica massacre marked the turning point in Western policy, which gradually shifted. NATO attacked Bosnian Serb forces in 1995; Clinton then rescued the Bosnian Serbs from defeat at the hands of the Bosnians and Croatians, forcing the latter to abandon their victorious advance, and followed this up with the ambiguous Dayton Accord, which recognised the Bosnian Serb statelet created by genocide, but nevertheless buried forever the possibility of a Great Serbia. Milošević was Clinton’s ally at Dayton, even pledging Serb cooperation with the ICTY. But the tide had turned, and when Milošević attempted a third round of ethnic-cleansing, in Kosovo in the late 1990s, the Western alliance partially redeemed its earlier disgrace, and this time took resolute action to stop him.

The movement in opposition to the Kosovo War in the West marked the scraping of the bottom of the ‘anti-imperialist’ barrel, with its selective opposition to war (it did not oppose Milošević’s), selective support for national sovereignty (it did not uphold Bosnia’s or Kosovo’s) and selective respect for UN resolutions (it did not support those directed against Milošević). This was a precursor to the equally unprincipled stance of part of the ‘anti-war’ movement over Iraq – involving support for Arab dictators, Iraqi Sunni sectarian murderers and Islamic fundamentalist fascists. Milošević – the phoney socialist, phoney anti-imperialist and phoney champion of national sovereignty – remains an appropriate hero to all those for whom opposition to ‘Bush and Blair’ is so absolute as to override all principles – such as democracy, anti-fascism, human rights, gender equality and national self-determination – that might once have been unquestionable for all politically honourable people. Milošević personifies the link between the Communist dictatorships of the twentieth century and the anti-American left of the twenty-first.

The author is a senior research fellow at Kingston University. His How Bosnia Armed was published by Saqi in 2004, while Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: the Partisans and the Chetniks will be published by OUP in September 2006.

LESSONS FROM THE MILOSEVIC TRIAL

April 26, 2006 1 comment

LESSONS FROM THE MILOSEVIC TRIAL

By Gwynn Mac Carrick

Bosniak (Muslim) Civilian in Serb-run Concentration Camp Trnopolje

The long-running trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague, complete with courtroom drama, demonstrated the many pitfalls entailed in trying deposed leaders in a court of law. In the wake of the which ended with his death before judgment prosecution of the Serbian leader, it is timely to decide what lessons, if any, can be drawn from this trial, which might have application for the proceedings against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad, and other high profile defendants in the future.
Inevitably, former world leaders indicted for international crimes will not go quietly. These chief defendants drag out their cases, disparage witnesses, interject, follow nuisances of exchange, mock the court, evade and prevaricate.
It is of primary importance then, that the prosecution has a coherent prosecutorial strategy. What Milosevic’s trial has taught us is that the simpler the strategy the better. That is, by reducing the complexity of the indictment and limiting the objectives of the trial to achievable goals, the Office of the Prosecutor enhances the prospect of a final judicial outcome in the lifetime of the defendant.
Second, if the court and the international community at large are to separate facts from theatrics and prevent the court from being used as a venue for staging extrinsic and irrelevant political issues, there is a need to put in place a strategy for reducing the melodramatics of the courtroom proceedings.
Milosevic, 64, was charged with 66 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity spanning the 1991-1995 war in Croatia, the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and the 1998-99 Serb crackdown in Kosovo. He denied the charges and died in custody before a verdict was delivered. Notwithstanding the voluminous amount of evidence presented, compiled in hundreds of thousands of documents and exhibits in his case, and the adducing of countless hours of witness testimony over the course of a four-year period, the net result was nil.
This was avoidable, given that the trial chamber judges, who became frustrated with the pace of the proceedings, urged the prosecutors to trim the indictment list to a manageable number of the strongest claims. However the prosecutors refused, on the basis that shortening the indictments would result in disrespecting the victims and ignore realities. Instead the prosecution offered an extensive amount of exhibits and an archive of eyewitness accounts, photographs and videos relating to the slaughter of an estimated 8,000 [Bosniak] Muslim men and boys in July 1995 in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica and the relentless shelling of Sarajevo.
The Milosevic trial dragged on for over four years, with testimony from hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents admitted into evidence, in an effort to present a comprehensive account of the historical events, rather than simply focusing on the elements of the crime.

This is where the international criminal prosecutions of major defendants are getting it wrong. Trials have become an attempt to reconstruct history rather that a strictly legal process. Prosecutions are approached from the viewpoint that the testimony of witnesses is a cathartic exercise, which marks the vindication of victims and the start of national healing. This is too ambitious. The court should be reserved for testing the strictly legal and factual issues.

In reality Milosevic’s trial dealt with a mega-case, which involved atrocities committed over a decade in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. The court proceedings concluded at Milosevic’s death, with no judgment. The former Yugoslav president had eluded the criminal process.
The length and complexity of the Milosevic trial helped convince Iraqi prosecutors that they needed to concentrate on a few key events rather than attempt to cover the full range of alleged atrocities during Hussein’s 24-year rule. To avoid this evidentiary overload, the Iraqi tribunal decided to conduct a dozen mini-trials, the first case focusing on Saddam’s 1982 retaliatory attack on the town of Dujail and the torture and murder of 143 of its inhabitants.
Michael Schraf an eminent international lawyer who helped train the five judges for the Saddam trial suggests, “One of the lessons of the Milosevic trial is that war crimes need to be streamlined and efficient”. He states, “The old adage ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ proved to be accurate in the case of Milosevic”.
“The Dujail case is serving as a test cast, a judicial laboratory, for the judges to get used to the novel rules and procedures,” says Scharf. “Most importantly, they have learned how to balance the rights of the defendants and at the same time maintain control of the courtroom in the face of defence attempts to disrupt the proceedings.”
The Milosevic case was used as both an example and an illustration of what not to do during the Iraqi judges’ preparation. A major departure from the Milosevic trial is that Saddam is being tried on individual and specific charges rather than a broad case of crimes against humanity. This is a big lesson to draw. Schraf explains that in the Iraqi court each case stands on its own, at the end of which, there will be a judgment. The judgments of these mini- trials constitute “snapshots of evil”.
According to the daily Le Monde, the high court in Baghdad announced on April 4 that after the initial trial, a more significant trial would be held in which Saddam Hussein and six other defendants would be tried for crimes committed during the 1987 and 1988 anti-Kurd campaign in Al-Anfal, resulting in 100,000 to 200,000 victims. In this case, Saddam is indicted along with Ali Hassan Al-Majid, (known as “Chemical Ali”), on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, for the destruction of thousands of villages, the displacement of their residents and the gassing of the village of Halabja in March 1988, which resulted in 8,000 victims.
The hearing of these “snapshot of evil” indictments could last for years as new charges, including genocide are laid. The Iraqi authorities are keen for closure following former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic’s death before he faced a verdict on war crimes and also conscious not to “bite off more than they can chew”.
Attempting to try the ousted leader for genocide against Kurds will almost certainly mean that these criminal matters will take years to resolve. However, by drafting a series of disciplined indictments that focus on specific events the trials are self-contained.
Some observers have cautioned against haste. The former chief of the Iraqi Crimes against Humanity Unit, Tom Parker, says that in the context of Iraq it is more important for due process to be seen to be done than it is for a speedy trial. Parker favours procedural fairness over timeliness, on the basis that Saddam’s trial should constitute “an important building block in the construction of a credible Iraqi judicial system”. He added that, “a rushed trial could signal nothing had changed and justice in Iraq was still biddable to political expediency”.
Also speaking of the Iraqi court, Theodor Meron said it would have to guarantee the rights of its famous defendant to appear credible to the public, stating, “Any court dealing with atrocities has to pay particular respect to due process. There can be no cutting corners.”
It is a universal principle that any criminal jurisdiction, be it national or international, must extend to an accused person a system of justice that is both regular and fair. While not for a moment suggesting that there should be any diminution of the rights afforded the accused in major trials of this nature, it is important that the prosecutors do not hoist themselves on their own petard.
A trial of an individual cannot at the same time attempt to satisfy other external agenda, for instance, attempting to be a national catharsis, a medium for national healing, a comprehensive history lesson and a panacea for a failed justice system.
Unnecessarily broadening the trial objectives beyond the displacement of the burden of proof by the satisfaction of requisite elements sets the bar for the prosecution at an impossibly high level, thereby playing into the hands of former dictators, who are masters at manipulation and astutely aware of the theatrical effect of behaving badly.
If the prosecution stakes out the righteous high ground, then the defence will inevitably seek to show that the prosecutor represents an interested party rather than a mere officer of the court. The contest is then about personalities, as opposed to the merits of the matter. If the trial simply deals with the merits in a value neutral manner, then it will avoid the trial becoming a showdown between morality versus hypocrisy.
Some commentators have suggested that one of the greatest obstacles for prosecutors in the trials of former dictators is the sheer force of their personality on trial. Milosevic, for instance, acted in his own defence, with a staff of Serbian lawyers and researchers collecting material and conducting investigations on his behalf. He also had two court-appointed attorneys who intervened in procedural matters. This permitted him to have counsel, but also be disruptive himself.
Many critics and courtroom observers say Milosevic was the main reason his trial lasted so long. Early in the trial Milosevic was known for courtroom speeches and temperamental outbursts, following every nuance of exchange and frequently interjecting complaints or questions, even correcting courtroom interpreters. Milosevic disparaged the tribunal in court, threatened and insulted witnesses and tried to make the trial about the US and British military action against Serbia.
He logged a succession of sick days on doctors’ recommendation, resulting in the court sessions being reduced to three days a week to reduce his stress and hypertension.

The lessons of Milosevic’s prolonged trial were uppermost in the minds of those establishing the criminal tribunal for Iraq, now underway in Baghdad. Methods for keeping the trial short, fair and under control were the primary concerns.
Keeping order in these politically charged cases have proved a big issue. In an effort to circumvent this problem of self-representation, last August the Iraqi National Assembly enacted revised rules for the tribunal. Under the rules, Saddam had to be represented by legal counsel, in order to prevent him from using the court as a political forum to attack the US and the new Iraqi Government.
In keeping with Iraqi legal tradition, however, the judges have allowed Saddam to question witnesses. This has given Saddam a platform to disparage and prevaricate. So far, according to observers, the trial of Saddam Hussein has been characterised by chaos, with the bench often struggling to maintain order. The defence lawyers walked out, prompting their dismissal and an order by the court to continue the trial with court-appointed public defenders. In protest, Saddam and his co-defendants have refused to return to court, thereby requiring the court to make a case to the public, clearly explaining the ruling.
From the initial proceedings it is evident that the Iraqi tribunal will have teething issues, but whether any lessons have been learned from The Hague experience remains to be seen.
Undoubtedly, the trials of leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein will be followed shortly by the trial of other similarly situated deposed leaders. This week the UN Security Council may ask the Netherlands to host the special court for Sierra Leone, established four years ago in Freetown, so that it can try its most important defendant, former Liberian president Charles Taylor, who was incarcerated on March 29. In this case it would appear that the relocation of Taylor to The Hague is a prosecutorial strategy aimed at security and to avoid the pitfalls of in situ prosecution.
Similarly, the lessons learned from the trial of Milosevic have application elsewhere. For instance, if the international community is to avoid the same outcome in Cambodia as the Milosevic trial, it will need to ensure the prompt establishment of a trial chamber to begin hearing matters as a matter of priority. Presently the Cambodian Government is delaying setting up the extraordinary chambers to try ex-Khmer Rouge leaders, adopting a strategy that increases the likelihood of these leaders dying before they come to trial.
It is imperative that we learn the lessons. Trying former world leaders is always going to test any criminal system, but the Milosevic precedent tells us that the prosecution can get smarter and more efficient about how they conduct proceedings, primarily by simplifying their prosecutorial strategy. Ambitious drafting is counter-productive and zealous posturing with respect to what these trials will achieve on a grand scale, will be met predictably by distain and counterclaim from the defence.
If we have learned anything from Milosevic’s trial it is “keep it simple” and “keep it free from posturing” by both parties to the proceedings. This way the international criminal process can ensure the pronouncement of timely and disinterested judgment from legal institutions which are, to the extent possible, freed from their political context.

THE MILOSEVIC ACCOUNT

April 26, 2006 Comments off

The Milosevic Account

Author: Eric Gordy

If no governing authority judges Milosevic’s life and rule, those who depended on his power will dream of his vindication and their return to power, writes the author of ‘The Culture of Power in Serbia: nationalism and the destruction of alternatives’ (1999) on the Open Democracy website
Slobodan Milosevic was a challenge to justice from the beginning, but he was always good for criminals. In death as in life.
He passed away later than many people would have hoped, but too early to allow the tribunal to reach a verdict on the charges filed against him, for gross violations of international humanitarian law. Inevitably, the conditions of his passing damage the tribunal: why did the prosecutors supplement their charges with historical claims that no legal institution could hope to adjudicate? Why was he permitted to conduct an inept self-defence that dragged out over several years? How was he given access to debilitating drugs which counteracted his prescribed treatment and, intentionally or not, facilitated his death?
It is a pattern familiar to people who observed him in power and out over the years. Beginning by saying one thing and doing another, he built a record of distancing himself from his own actions, from the actions of people he abetted, from the results of his engagement, and when he had nothing left, from himself. When he claimed in his final letter to have been defending his country, he was continuing a long habit of transferring responsibility for his own behaviour to other people and to the whole society.
But no regime can sustain itself without accomplices, and nobody is willing to become an accomplice unless somebody benefits. Milosevic may have demolished the Serbian middle class and put the working class out of work, but he has left one lasting legacy: a new criminal class that owes its position entirely to him. To see who they are, pay attention to who shows up for his funeral in Pozarevac on 18 March. The vast majority of Serbs will skip it.
A memorial was published in the newspapers Blic and Vecernje novosti on 14 March, signed by thirty-four of Milosevic’s fellow detainees in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) holding facility in Scheveningen. They saluted the memory of their “fellow fighter” in The Hague. Shortly thereafter, detainees began making demands of the prison authorities. They want the United Nations Security Council to appoint a special commission to investigate their living conditions.
Milan Martic, the former low-ranking police officer who became president of the “Republic of Serbian Krajina” and sent missiles into the centre of Zagreb before fleeing ahead of the people who were soon to made refugees, lamented: “I am sick. I demand to be seen by a doctor and for my diet to be managed.” These are people who have a good deal in common even if they do not share the same nationality – above all, they have in common the expectation that their comfort will be looked after by people for whom they care not a bit.
And what of the people who saw to their comfort? The daily paper Blic ran a feature on 14 March with reactions from people whose lives were touched by Milosevic.
Ivica Lazovic, who was shot in the head by a Milosevic supporter during a catastrophic attempt to disrupt the massive antiregime demonstrations in 1996, contrasts his fate with the life of the man who died in custody: “I am at peace with honest people and with God, and as always, an enemy of malicious people, bandits and thieves. I sleep peacefully.”
Dusan Vukovic, who demonstratively refused to accept from Milosevic a posthumous military medal for his son who was killed in the Kosovo conflict, notes that Milosevic “died very pleasantly considering all he did.”
Now will come a controversy, well justified, regarding the kind of medical attention Milosevic received and the source of the rifampicin that may have brought on his fatal heart attack. It will be impossible for the managers of the ICTY detention facility to escape some blame for his fate – even in the best case, they are at least guilty of negligence. The inevitable scandal will, once again, draw attention away from the character of Milosevic’s rule.
Nobody will compare the medical attention he received to the care shown to Ivan Stambolic, Slavko Ćuruvija, the people kidnapped off a train and massacred in Strpci, the people kidnapped off a bus and massacred in Sjeverin, the people shot with their hands bound behind their backs in Srebrenica, the people whose bodies were dumped into the river near Tekija, the people whose bodies were moved to a secret mass grave in Batajnica, and whose bodies were incinerated at Mackatica.
The sleep of reason creates monsters. If no governing authority offers a serious account of the balance of Milosevic’s life, the people whose social prominence depended on his rule will. The criminals he cultivated may well return to power, the members of his family may return to public life, and his memory may begin to be venerated, both by people whose lives he destroyed and by outsiders who imagine him to have been a warrior against imperialism. If he were alive, Milosevic would appreciate the irony.
Eric Gordy is associate professor of sociology at Clark University, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Culture of Power in Serbia: nationalism and the destruction of alternatives, Penn State University Press, 1999. This comment was posted on the Open Democracy website at http://www.opendemocracy.net on 17 March 2006.

RADISLAV KRSTIC – GUILTY

December 11, 2005 Comments off
Radislav Krstic (IT-98-33)

Chief-of-Staff/Deputy Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) Drina Corps. Promoted to rank of General-Major in June 1995, assumed command of the Drina Corps on 13 July 1995. Promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel-General in April 1998.

Born 15 February 1948 in Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina
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Arrest / Surrendered

2 December 1998, detained by SFOR
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Transferred to ICTY

3 December 1998
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Initial Appearances

17 December 1998. 25 November 1999, pleaded “not guilty” to all counts.
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Judgement

2 August 2001, sentenced to 46 years’ imprisonment
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Appeals Chamber Judgement

19 April 2004, sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment
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Serving Sentence

Transferred to the United Kingdom on 20 December 2004 to serve the remainder of his sentence. Credit for time served since 3 December 1998.

Sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment
Serving sentence in the United Kingdom

Crimes convicted of (examples):
Adding and Abetting Genocide, Murders (violation of the Laws or Customs of War),
Extermination and Persecution
(crimes against Humanity)

While 25,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly were forcibly transferred from the Srebrenica enclave, the VRS forces devised and implemented a plan to eliminate all Bosniak men of military age at Srebrenica, regardless of their civilian or military status.

Between 13 and 19 July 1995, as many as 7,000 to 8,000 men were systematically murdered or killed in mass executions.

Serious bodily or mental harm was done to those few who survived the mass executions.

From 15 July 1995 at the latest, Radislav Krstic was aware of the intent to commit genocide on the part of some members of the VRS Main Staff, and with that knowledge, he permitted the Main Staff to use personnel and resources under his command to facilitate the killings.

Murder (violation of the laws and customs of war) and Persecution (crimes against humanity)

Radislav Krstic played a leading role in an operation which planned an attack on the Srebrenica enclave. This operation was code-named “Krivaja 95”.

Part of this operation was the shelling of Srebrenica calculated to terrify the Bosniak population and to drive them to Potocari, a nearby settlement north of Srebrenica town where a total lack of food, shelter and necessary services would accelerate their fear and panic and ultimately their willingness to leave the territory.

Upon the arrival of the Serb forces in Potocari, the Bosniak refugees taking shelter in and around the UN compound there were subjected to a terror campaign comprised of threats, insults, looting and burning of nearby houses, beatings, rapes and murders.

From his presence at two meetings convened by VRS Commander General Ratko Mladic at the Hotel Fontana in Bratunac, a town near Potocari, Radislav Krstic knew that the Bosniak civilians were in fact facing a humanitarian crisis and subject to criminal acts.

Radislav Krstic thus incurred liability for the incidental murders, rapes, beatings and abuses committed in the execution of this criminal enterprise between 10 and 13 July 1995 in Potocari.

Radislav Krstic ordered the procurement of the buses for the forcible transfer of 25,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly to Kladanj, in Bosnian government-held territory, and their subsequent departure there carrying the civilians from Potocari.

Radislav Krstic was originally indicted together with Vinko Pandurevic

The Indictment(“Srebrenica”)
Radislav Krstic was originally indicted on 30 October 1998 for genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, based on his alleged role in the events in and around the Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica between 11 July 1995 and 1 November 1995. Together with him, Vinko Pandurevic and Vidoje Blagojevic were indicted. The indictment was confirmed on 2 November 1998. A redacted version of the indictment, wherein all reference to the co-accused were deleted, was read out to Radislav Krstic at his initial appearance on 7 December 1998 and filed on 10 June 1999. At his initial appearance, Radislav Krstic pleaded “not guilty” to each of the counts. Upon the order of the Trial Chamber, on 27 October 1999, the Prosecution filed the final indictment, which contained the additional charges of deportation, a crime against humanity, or, alternatively, inhumane acts (forcible transfer), a crime against humanity. On 25 November 1999, Radislav Krstic entered a plea of “not guilty” to the new counts.

Charges:
Radislav Krstic on the basis of individual criminal responsibility (Article 7 (1) of the Statute) and/or alternatively, superior criminal responsibility (Article 7(3)) with:

Genocide; alternatively, complicity to commit genocide (genocide, Article 4)
Extermination; murder; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; deportation; alternatively,
inhumane acts (forcible transfer) (crimes against humanity, Article 5)
Murder (violations of the laws or customs of war, Article 3)

The Trial
The facts of this case relate mainly to events which took place in the area of Srebrenica around July 1995. Srebrenica is a town located in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. It gave its name to a United Nations so-called “safe-area”, which was established in 1993 as an enclave of safety, to protect the civilian population there from the surrounding war. Despite some violations by both sides of the conflict of the safe-area, a two-year period of relative stability followed the establishment of the safe-area, although the prevailing conditions for the inhabitants of Srebrenica were poor.

The Take-Over of Srebrenica and its Aftermath
In March 1995, Radovan Karadžic, President of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska (“RS”) issued a directive (“Directive No. 7”) to the Bosnian Serb Army concerning the long-term strategy of their forces around the enclave. “By planned and well-thought out combat operations” the VRS was directed to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica”. Through planned operations and by unobtrusively restricting the issuing of permits, the logistics support of UN Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) to the enclave and the supply of material resources to the Bosniak population were reduced and limited, making them depended on the good will of Serb-led forces. At the same time the Bosnian Serb Army sought to avoid condemnation by the international community and international public opinion.

As set down in the directive, the humanitarian situation deteriorated to a catastrophic level.

On the basis of Directive No. 7, on 31 March 1995, the VRS Main Staff issued Directive No. 7.1., signed by General Ratko Mladic. It directed the Drina Corps to, inter alia, conduct “active combat operations … around the enclaves” (including the other nearby safe-areas of Zepa and Goražde). As a consequence, Bosnian Serb forces captured an UNPROFOR observation post in the southeast corner of the Srebrenica enclave. In response to this aggression, a raiding party of Bosniaks attacked the nearby Serb village of Višnjica, in the early morning of 26 June 1995. During this attack, some houses were burned and several people were killed.

Following this, the then commander of the Drina Corps, General-Major Milenko Zivanovic, signed two orders laying out the plans for the attack on the Srebrenica safe-area. The operation was code-named Krivaja 95. The Drina Corps was the VRS military formation tasked with planning and carrying out of the operation. The initial plan for Krivaja 95 did not include a VRS scheme to bus the Bosniak civilian population out of the enclave, nor to execute all the military aged Bosniak men, as which ultimately happened. However, the plan was aimed at reducing the safe-area of Srebrenica to its urban core around the town as a step towards the larger VRS goal of plunging the Bosniak population into a humanitarian crisis and, ultimately, eliminating the enclave.

The military offensive on Srebrenica began in earnest on 6 July 1995. Once the southern perimeter of the enclave began to collapse, about 4,000 Bosniak residents, fled north into Srebrenica town. The advancing Bosnian Serbs “cleansed” the houses in the southern part of the enclave.

Late on 9 July 1995, emboldened by the military success and the surprising lack of resistance from the Bosniaks, as well as the absence of any significant reaction from the international community, Radovan Karadžic issued a new order authorizing the VRS Drina Corps to capture the town of Srebrenica. NATO plans to bomb VRS artillery positions overlooking and shelling the town were abandoned following VRS threats to kill Dutch peacekeepers being held by the VRS, as well as threats to shell the UN compound at Potocari, and surrounding areas in the north of the enclave, where thousands of civilians had fled.

Thousands of residents, desperate for protection, crowded around the UNPROFOR compound in Srebrenica town, eventually forced their way inside. The chaotic scene was exacerbated when mortar shells landed inside the compound around noon, wounding several people. Following the shelling of the compound and with the encouragement of the Dutch UN peacekeepers, Bosniak residents from Srebrenica began to move towards Potocari. Shells fell alongside the road and VRS forces were seen bringing up the rear of the crowd. Faced with the reality that Srebrenica had fallen under Bosnian Serb forces control, thousands of Bosniak residents from Srebrenica fled to Potocari seeking protection within the UN compound there. By the evening of 11 July 1995, approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees were gathered in Potocari. Although the vast majority were women, children, elderly or disabled, witnesses estimated that there were at least 300 men inside the perimeter of the UN compound and between 600 and 900 men in the crowd outside.

Late in the afternoon of 11 July 1995, General Ratko Mladic and the then Deputy Commander and Chief-of-Staff of the Drina Corps Radislav Krstic and other VRS officers, took a triumphant walk through the empty streets of Srebrenica town.

Conditions in Potocari were deplorable. There was little food or water available and the July heat was stifling. The people were scared and panicked.

As the situation in Potocari escalated towards crisis on the evening of 11 July, word spread that able-bodied men should take to the woods, form a column together with the members of the 28th Division of the Armija Bosnia-Herzegovina (ABiH) and attempt to breakthrough towards Bosniak held territory in the northwest. At around 10:00 p.m. the “division command”, together with the Bosniak municipal authorities of Srebrenica, made the decision to form a column. The men were afraid they would be killed if they fell into Bosnian Serb hands in Potocari. At around midnight on 11 July a column of between 10,000 and 15,000 men started moving along the axis between Konjevic Polje and Bratunac. On 12 July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces launched an attack against the column. By the afternoon, or the early hours at the latest, Bosnian Serb forces had captured large numbers of these men at the rear. The largest groups of men from the column were captured on 13 July 1995, several thousands were collected in or near the Sandici Meadow and on the Nova Kasaba football field. Only the head of the column eventually managed to break through to Bosnian government-held territory.

On 11 July 1995, at about the same time as the decision to form the column was taken by the Bosniak men, General Ratko Mladic summoned UNPROFOR leaders for the first of three meetings with VRS officials at the Hotel Fontana in Bratunac. General Ratko Mladic led the meeting. General Milenko Zivanovic, then-Commander of the Drina Corps, was present along with other Drina Corps officers. A second meeting convened at the Hotel Fontana took place at around 11:00 p.m. General Ratko Mladic again presided the meeting. This time General Milenko Zivanovic was not present but General Radislav Krstic was. General Ratko Mladic was putting on a show calculated to intimidate the attendees. As the meeting began, the death cries of a pig being slaughtered just outside the window could be heard in the meeting room. Plans to transport the Bosniak civilians out of the enclave crystallized at this second meeting. General Ratko Mladic stated that he would provide the vehicles to transport the Srebrenica refugees out of Potocari. He demanded that all ABiH troops within the area of the former enclave lay down their arms. He made it clear that, if this did not happen, the survival of the Bosniak population would be in danger.

On 12 July at about 10:00 a.m., General Ratko Mladic convened the third and final meeting to discuss the fate of the Srebrenica Bosniaks. Once again, he dominated the meeting, with General Radislav Krstic sitting at his side. General Ratko Mladic conveyed the clear message at this meeting that the Bosniak refugees could survive only by leaving Srebrenica. In addition to that, he made it clear that their survival was conditional also upon a military surrender of the men.

By around noon on 12 July 1995, dozens of buses and trucks arrived in Potocari. In the afternoon, Bosnian Serb forces, under the direction of General Ratko Mladic, started to bus 25,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly out of Potocari to Bosnian government-held territory near Kladanj. The operation continued on 13 July 2005. Most of the women, children, and the elderly arrived safely.

As the transfer of the Bosniak children and elderly proceeded, General Ratko Mladic appeared accompanied by television crews who filmed him handing out sweets to children. Other than this one televised gesture, General Ratko Mladic and his men made no attempt to alleviate the suffering of the refugees who were desperate for food and water. Witnesses testified that once the television cameras were switched off, even the sweets were taken away from the children.
The already miserable conditions were compounded by an active campaign of terror, which increased the panic of the residents, making them frantic to leave. The refugees in the compound could see Serb soldiers setting houses and haystacks on fire. Serb soldiers mingled in the crowd cursing Bosniaks and telling them to leave; that they would be slaughtered. Sporadic killings occurred. As evening fell, the terror deepened. Screams, gunshots and other frightening noises were audible throughout the night and no one could sleep. Soldiers picked people out of the crowd taking them away: some returned; others did not. That night, a Dutch UNPROFOR medical orderly came across two Serb soldiers raping a young woman. Bosniak refugees nearby could see the rape, but could do nothing about it because of Serb soldiers standing nearby. Several individuals were so terrified that they committed suicide by hanging themselves. On the morning of 13 July 1995, refugees searching for water came upon clusters of corpses next to a nearby stream. Finding dead bodies in such a prominent place strengthened their resolve to flee as soon as possible.

The Bosniak military aged-men, who had not joined the column and were still in Potocari (numbering approximately 1,000), were separated from the women, children and elderly and transported to the nearby town of Bratunac. Subsequently, they were grouped with Bosniak men captured from the column. No discernible effort was made to keep separate the prisoners from Potocari and the men captured from the column in the woods. After being detained in Bratunac for between one and three days, the prisoners were transported elsewhere, as the buses used to transfer the women, children and elderly, became available.

Almost to a man, the thousands of Bosniak prisoners were executed. Some were killed individually or in small groups by the soldiers who captured them and some where killed in the places where they were temporarily detained. Most, however, were slaughtered in carefully orchestrated mass executions, commencing on 13 July 1995, in the region just north of Srebrenica. Prisoners not killed on 13 July 1995 were subsequently bussed to execution sites further north of Bratunac, within the zone of responsibility of the VRS Zvornik Brigade. The large-scale executions in the north took place between 14 and 17 July 1995.

Most of the mass executions followed a well-established pattern. The men were taken first to empty schools or warehouses. After being detained there for some hours, they were loaded on to buses or trucks and taken to another site for execution. Usually, the execution fields were in isolated locations. Once at the killing fields, the men were taken off the trucks in small groups, lined up and shot. Those who survived the initial round of gunfire were individually shot with an extra round, though sometimes only after they had been left to suffer for a time. Immediately afterwards, and sometimes even during the executions, earth moving equipment arrived and the bodies were buried, either on the spot where they were killed, or in another nearby location. At several of the sites, a few wounded survivors pretended to be dead and then crawled away.

Although forensic experts were not able to conclude with certainty how many bodies were in the mass-graves they were able to conservatively estimate that a minimum of 2,028 separate bodies were exhumed from the mass-graves. Only one of the 1,843 bodies for which sex could be determined was female. The Trial Chamber could not rule out the possibility that a percentage of the bodies in the gravesites examined may have been killed in combat. Overall, however, the forensic and demographic evidence presented by the Prosecution was consistent with the testimony of witnesses who appeared before the Trial Chamber and recounted the mass execution of thousands of Bosniak men at Čerska Valley, Kravica warehouse, Orahovac, Branjevo Farm, Petkovci Dam and Kozluk. The Trial Chamber was satisfied that the total number of executed men was likely to be within the range of 7,000 and 8,000.

The forensic evidence presented to the Trial Chamber suggested that, commencing in the early autumn of 1995, Bosnian Serb agencies engaged in a concerted effort to conceal the mass killings by relocating bodies from the initial primary grave sites to remote secondary graves.

Involvement of Drina Corps in the Srebrenica Crimes
The Trial Chamber found no evidence that the VRS Drina Corps devised or instigated any of the atrocities that followed the take-over of Srebrenica in July 1995. The evidence strongly suggests that the criminal activity was being directed by the VRS Main Staff under the direction of General Ratko Mladic. It was General Ratko Mladic who victoriously led the VRS officers through the empty streets of Srebrenica town on 11 July 1995 and it was he who threatened and intimidated the Bosniak and UNPROFOR representatives at the Hotel Fontana meetings. He was directing events in Potocari, both the transport of the women, children and elderly from there, as well as the separation of the men. Eyewitnesses reported the physical presence of General Ratko Mladic at the Sanici Meadow and Nova Kasaba football fields where thousands of Bosniak prisoners where detained. He was also identified as physically observing executions. There is further evidence suggesting the involvement of other individuals of the Main Staff in the criminal activity.

However, the Main Staff did not have the resources on its own to carry out the activities that occurred in the area of the Srebrenica enclave following its take-over. Hence the Main Staff had to rely upon the VRS Drina Corps to assist in the execution of its design.

The VRS Drina Corps was not oblivious to the overall VRS strategy of eliminating the Srebrenica enclave. Although Krivaja 95 started out as a limited operation, it quickly accelerated into a plan seizing Srebrenica when the opportunity presented itself. From that point, the Drina Corps continued to shell the enclave intensively with the intent to cause the Bosniak civilians to flee the area. The Prosecution failed to prove that VRS Drina Corps units committed any of the opportunistic crimes that occurred in Potocari, on 12 and 13 July 1995. However, the VRS Drina Corps were fully cognisant of the catastrophic humanitarian situation of the Bosniak refugees in Potocari and the fact that Bosnian Serb forces were terrorising the population there.

When the plan to transport the Bosniak population out of Potocari was devised, the VRS Drina Corps were called upon to procure the buses. Drina Corps personnel were also present in Potocari, overseeing the transportation operation, knowing full well that the Bosniaks were not exercising a genuine choice to leave the area.

It was not established that the Drina Corps was involved in devising the plan to execute the military aged Bosniak men of Srebrenica. Furthermore, the Prosecution did not prove the involvement of the VRS Drina Corps in the executions that happened on 13 July 1995. However, although there may have been some initial desire on the part of the VRS Main Staff to limit the knowledge about the executions, this could not be sustained. First, the executions formed an integral part of the VRS follow-up activities after the take-over of Srebrenica and could not be neatly or secretly compartmentalised. The VRS Drina Corps was preoccupied with both the transportation operation and the passage of the Bosniak men at the time and thus, inevitably, had to know that the men were being taken prisoner. Additionally, the massive scale of atrocities all occurred within a section of the VRS Drina Corps zone of responsibility. In the absence of sufficient personnel and equipment of its own, the Main Staff had to rely upon resources of the Drina Corps to assist with the executions.

As a consequence, the Trial Chamber found that, by the evening of 13 July 1995, the Drina Corps Command must have been aware of the VRS plan to execute all of the thousands of military aged Bosniak men captured in the area of the former enclave.

In contrast to the scant evidence implicating the VRS Drina Corps in the commission of the mass executions that took place on 13 July 1995, there was substantial and compelling evidence showing that between 14 July and 17 July 1995, the resources of subordinate VRS Drina Corps Brigades were utilised to assist with the mass executions. Given that these subordinate Brigades continued to operate under the Command of the VRS Drina Corps, the Command itself must have known of the involvement of its units in the executions as of 14 July 1995.

The Prosecution did not prove that units of the VRS Drina Corps were engaged in the reburial of bodies from the primary gravesites to secondary gravesites in the early autumn of 1995. However, given the scale of the operation, the Drina Corps must at least have known this activity was being carried out within its zone of responsibility.

The Role of General Radislav Krstic in the Srebrenica Crimes
Radislav Krstic was the Deputy Commander and Chief-of-Staff of the VRS Drina Corps from June 1995 until July 1995. From early July onwards, Radislav Krstic, began to assume more and more de facto responsibility within the Drina Corps. On the evening of 13 July 1995, General Ratko Mladic appointed Radislav Krstic as Commander of the Drina Corps and, from that point in time, Radislav Krstic operated as the Drina Corps Commander and the entire Corps recognized him as such.

Radislav Krstic was the person primarily directing Krivaja 95 from 6 July 1995, at least until General Ratko Mladic arrived on 9 July 1995. Regardless of whether or not he was sidelined upon the arrival of General Ratko Mladic, it is clear that Radislav Krstic was fully informed of the conduct of the operation. Given his position as Deputy Commander/Chief-of-Staff of the VRS Drina Corps and his prominent role in the drafting and execution of Krivaja 95, the Trial Chamber found that Radislav Krstic must have known the VRS military activities against Srebrenica were calculated to trigger a humanitarian crisis, eventually leading to the elimination of the enclave. From his vantage point in the hills, he had an unobstructed view of the impact of the shelling upon the terrorised Bosniak residents of Srebrenica town.

As a result of his attendance at two of the three Hotel Fontana meetings, Radislav Krstic was fully apprised of the catastrophic humanitarian situation confronting Bosniak refugees in Potocari and that he was put on notice that the survival of the Bosniak population was in question following the take-over of Srebrenica.

Radislav Krstic ordered the procurement of buses for the forcible transfer of the Bosniak population from Potocari and he issued orders to his subordinates about securing the road along which the buses would travel to Kladanj. He generally supervised the transportation operation. Radislav Krstic was heard ordering his subordinate that no harm should befall the Bosniak civilians who were being transported out of Potocari.

As a result of his presence in Potocari on 12 July 2005, Radislav Krstic must have known of the appalling conditions facing the Bosniak refugees and the general mistreatment inflicted by VRS soldiers on that day.

There is no evidence that Radislav Krstic was personally present at any of the execution sites. Indisputably, at the time the executions commenced, he was engaged in preparations for combat activities for Zepa, another UN safe-area nearby Srebrenica, and from 14 July 1995 onwards, in launching the attack itself.

Nonetheless, as of 13 July 1995, the Drina Corps Command must have known about the plan to execute all of the military aged Bosniak men and, as of 14 July 1995, the Corps Command must have known of the involvement of VRS Drina Corps subordinate units in the mass executions. Given his position in the Drina Corps Command, first as Chief-of-Staff and then as Commander, Radislav Krstic must also have known about these matters. Furthermore, when Colonel Ljubisa Beara contacted him on 15 July, Radislav Krstic undertook to arrange that men from the Bratunac Brigade assist with the Branjevo Farm and the Pilica Dom executions.

The Prosecution failed to establish that Radislav Krstic was directly involved in the reburial activity. However, Radislav Krstic must have at least known that this massive operation was occurring within his zone of responsibility.

Radislav Krstic was aware that men under his command had participated in the execution of Bosniak men and failed to punish any of them.

The Trial Chamber found that Radislav Krstic participated in two criminal plans, initially to ethically cleanse the Srebrenica enclave of all Bosniak civilians and later to kill the military aged men of Srebrenica. For his participation in these crimes, Radislav Krstic was found guilty of murder, persecutions and genocide. The fact that Radislav Krstic occupied the highest level of a VRS Corps commander was considered as an aggravating factor because he had utilized that position to participate directly in genocide.

On 2 August 2001, in the light of the above considerations, the Trial Chamber rendered its judgement, convicting the accused to 46 years’ imprisonment.

The Appeal
On 15 August 2001, Counsel for Radislav Krstic filed a notice of appeal against the Trial Chamber judgement. The Prosecution filed a notice of appeal on 16 August 2001.

The Defence appealed Radislav Krstic’s conviction for genocide committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica. They argued that the Trial Chamber both misconstrued the legal definition of genocide and erred in applying the definition to several circumstances of the case.

The Appeal’s Chamber dismissed the appeal with regard to the legal definition of genocide. With regard to alleged factual errors, the Appeal’s Chamber dismissed the appeal on some issues, but granted it with regard to the following issues:

The Appeal’s Chamber found that the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the soldiers of the VRS Bratunac Brigade participated in the executions at Branjevo Farm and the Pilica Dom on 16 July 1995 was not one that reasonable arbiter of fact could have made. There was no direct evidence to establish the involvement of the Drina Corps in carrying out these executions, and as such could not be relied upon as evidence of Radislav Krstic’s direct involvement in assisting executions. All the evidence could establish was that he knew that those murders were occurring and that he permitted the Main Staff to use personnel and resources under his command to facilitate them. In these circumstances the criminal responsibility of Radislav Krstic was that of an aider and abettor to the murders, extermination and persecution, and not of a principal co-perpetrator.

Furthermore, according to the Appeal’s Chamber, Radislav Krstic was aware of the intent to commit genocide on the part of some members of the VRS Main Staff. However, there was a demonstrable failure by the Trial Chamber to supply adequate proof that Radislav Krstic possessed the genocidal intent. Radislav Krstic, therefore, was pronounced not guilty of genocide as a principal perpetrator, but guilty as aider and abettor to genocide.

The Prosecution challenged the Trial Chamber’s decision that it was not permissible to enter cumulative convictions based on Radislav Krstic’s convictions for extermination and persecution of the Bosniaks of Srebrenica between 13 and 19 July 1995, and for murder and inhumane acts as crimes against humanity committed against the Bosniak civilians in Potocari between 10 and 13 July 1995. Additionally, the Prosecution argued that the sentence imposed by the Trial Chamber was inadequate.

The Appeal’s Chamber considered that the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that the convictions for extermination, persecution and genocide were impermissibly cumulative was erroneous. Instead they concluded that these offences become subsumed within the offence of persecution and thus confirmed the Trial Chamber’s conclusion.

The Prosecution’s appeal with regard to the inadequateness of the sentence was dismissed. However, in light of Appeals Chamber’s findings in relation to Radislav Krstic’s form of responsibility, an adjustment of the sentence was necessary.

The Appeal’s Chamber adopted the Trial Chamber’s findings as to the aggravating factors. However, it recognized four mitigating factors (the nature of Radislav Krstic’s provision of Drina Corps assets and resources; the fact that he had only recently assumed command of the Corps during combat operations; the fact that he was present in and around Potocari for the most of two hours; his efforts to ensure the safety of the Bosniak civilians transported out of Potocari).

On 21 November 2003, an evidentiary hearing took place and the appeals hearing took place on 26 and 27 November 2003.

The Appeals Chamber rendered its judgement on 19 April 2004, convicting Radislav Krstic for adding and abetting genocide; adding and abetting murder (Violation of the laws or customs of war); Extermination and Persecution (crimes against humanity) committed between 13 and 19 July 1995; and for Murder (Violation of the laws or customs of war) and Persecution (crimes against humanity) committed between 10 and 13 July 1995 in Potocari.

The Appeals Chamber unanimously sentenced Radislav Krstic to 35 years’ imprisonment.
Judge Shahabuddeen appended a Partial Dissenting Opinion.

On 20 December 2004 Radislav Krstic was transferred to the United Kingdom to serve his sentence.


keywords: Radislav Krstic, Srebrenica Genocide, Srebrenica Massacre, Bosniaks, Bosnian Muslims, Bosnia-Herzegovina