World News
Former Serb Leader Radovan Karadzic Gets 40-Years for Genocide
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HAGUE, Netherlands – A U.N. court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges Thursday and sentenced him to 40 years in prison for orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout Bosnia’s 1992-95 war that left 100,000 people dead.
As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair but showed little emotion. He plans to appeal the convictions.
The U.N. court found Karadzic guilty of genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe’s worst mass murder since the Holocaust.
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Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic was the only person in the Bosnian Serb leadership with the power to halt the genocide but instead gave an order for prisoners to be transported from one location to another to be killed.
In a carefully planned operation, Serb forces transported Muslim men to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Kwon said Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, intended “that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed.”
Karadzic also was held criminally responsible for murder, attacking civilians and terror for overseeing the deadly 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the war and for taking hostage U.N. peacekeepers.
However, the court acquitted Karad zic in a second genocide charge, for a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces.
Peter Robinson, part of Karadzic’s legal team, said he would appeal.
“Dr. Karadzic is disappointed. He’s astonished,” Robinson told reporters. “He feels the trial chamber took inference instead of evidence in reaching the conclusions that it did.”
Karadzic had faced a total of 11 charges and a maximum life sentence but was given 40 years imprisonment.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence, but the court’s chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said 40 years amounted to the same thing for the 70-year-old Karadzic.
“Overall, we are satisfied with the outcome,” Brammertz said. He said prosecutors would study the judgment carefully before deciding whether to appeal the one genocide acquittal.
In Sarajevo, Amra Misic, 49, said: “I took a day off to watch the verdict as I was waiting for this for 20 years. I wish him a long life.”
Prosecutors held Karadzic responsible as a political leader and commander-in-chief of Serb forces in Bosnia, which are blamed for the worst atrocities of the war. Karadzic had insisted he was innocent and says his wartime actions were intended to protect Serbs.
The trial is hugely significant for the U.N. tribunal and the development of international law. Karadzic is the most senior Bosnian Serb leader to face prosecution at the court housed in a former insurance company headquarters in The Hague.
Men follow the verdict in the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in a local bar on the outskirts of Belgrade. (Nemanja Pancic, AFP).
Karadzic’s conviction most likely will strengthen international jurisprudence on the criminal responsibility of political leaders for atrocities committed by forces under their control.
In Bosnia, which has remained divided since the war, posters displaying Karadzic’s photo and saying “We are all Radovan” were plastered on walls in several towns in the Serb part of the country. Dozens of people gathered in a park in the Bosnian Serb town of Doboj to offer support to Karadzic.