The past 12 months have seen another landmark verdict convicting a senior Bosnian Serb figure of involvement in the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II – Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in November.
Pronouncing Mladic guilty of genocide in the first-instance verdict, the UN court in The Hague said that he had “genocidal intent to destroy Bosniaks in Srebrenica”.
According to the judges, the proof of this intent was Mladic’s message to the Bosniak residents of Srebrenica that they could “either survive or disappear”.
Like Radovan Karadzic, who was convicted of genocide in a first-instance verdict the previous year, Mladic has indicated that he will appeal.
As this year’s anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres approaches, courts in The Hague, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Zagreb have handed down a total of 699 years of prison time – plus three life sentences – to defendants convicted of committing crimes after the fall of Srebrenica to the Bosnian Serb military and police, who killed more than 7,000 men and boys and deported over 40,000 women, children and elderly people.
The Bosnian state court has passed the most verdicts for Srebrenica crimes, sentencing 24 people; the Hague court has convicted 14 former members of the Bosnian Serb Army and police force, while the Serbian judiciary has convicted five people crimes in Srebrenica.
The Croatian judiciary meanwhile has convicted two former members of the Scorpions paramilitary unit.
The first verdict that established that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica was the one handed down in the case against the former deputy commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Drina Corps, Radislav Krstic, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for aiding and abetting the commission of genocide.
The Hague Tribunal concluded that the crime was planned at the top level and those most responsible were the staff of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
