Last Steps

Serbian Foreign Minister, Spongebob Squarepants

Karadžić in the Hague, negotiations for Mladić’s arrest, a strong dinar and a resurgent economy have paved a fast track to the EU for Serbia. But there is one thorn in the nation’s side that Boris Tadić’s pro-European government cannot make go away: Kosovo.

When NATO bombed military and government targets in Belgrade and elsewhere in Serbia in 1999 to halt the fighting between Milošević’s forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, the West registered decisively its support for an independent Kosovo. Bombing Belgrade for what was technically an internal conflict signaled Serbia’s loss of sovereignty in Kosovo. The position has effectively not been changed by the diplomatic and political equivocation of the past 9 years.

Muscled out of Kosovo (justly or unjustly), Serbia lost military and diplomatic avenues to challenge Kosovo’s recent declaration of independence. Which leaves the law. Vuk Jeremić, the Serbian Foreign Minister affectionately known as Spongebob Squarepants, left for New York the other day to seek support for his request that the ICJ review the legality of Kosovo’s independence. Serbia will need the backing of 96 UN nations for the ICJ to adopt Serbia’s resolution and review the Republic of Kosovo’s legality.

Russia, China, and India—all nations with separatist regions—have pledged support for the resolution. But with 45 EU nations recognizing Kosovo’s independence Serbia is unlikely to find the remaining 93. Nonetheless, experts told B92, the resolution carries “moral weight”. It also may incur a diplomatic cost, alienating Serbia from its potential peers in the EU.

If Serbia’s initiative fails to realize an ICJ review, it will remain to be seen how Serbia deals with the thorn of Kosovo, having exhausted the available resources to challenge the state’s independence. The broader question is how, if it can no longer remain on the government’s table, the issue will live on otherwise in Serbian political and social life.

The Verdict on Kravica

After two years of hearings, Bosnia’s national court this afternoon passed its first verdict involving charges of genocide, and its first verdict pertaining to crimes committed during the Srebrenica massacre of 1995. Hilmo Vučinić, the presiding judge and only Bosnian national on the three judge panel, ruled that seven members of the Army of the Republika Srpska [VRS] and the Republika Srpska Special Military Police [RSMUP] are guilty of committing the gravest crime punishable under international law: genocide.

In July 1995, Milenko Trifunović, Brane Džinić, Aleksandar Radovanović, Slobodan Jakovljević, Branislav Medan, and Petar Mitrović, as members of the Second Šekovići Police Detachment of the RSMUP commanded by Miloš Stupar, participated in the capture, detention and extermination of over 1,000 Bosniak men and boys escaping the VRS attack on the UN Srebrenica safe area.

On July 12 the Šekovići Detachment was deployed along a road leading from the town of Bratunac to Srebrenica. There, the detachment attacked a column of Bosniaks fleeing Srebrenica, forcing a large number to surrender by shelling and later deception. 1,000 of these captured were taken to a meadow, guarded by the Šekovići Detachment, and on July 13, bused and marched down the road and detained in a warehouse at the Kravica Farming Cooperative.

That evening Trifunović and Radovanović began systematically shooting the prisoners with machine guns while Džinić tossed hand grenades into the warehouse, one after another. The warehouse was divided into two large rooms. After the men killed everyone in the east room, they moved to the west room. Jakovljević, Medan, and Mitrović stood guard at the rear of the warehouse while the 1,000 prisoners were killed. Two people survived the massacre, hiding under the piles of dead bodies. Both served as witnesses in this trial.

The warehouse at the Kravica Farming Cooperative, where 1,000 Bosniaks were killed in July, 1995

Three of the sentenced were given 42 years in prison, two years over the prescribed 40 year sentence for genocide. Vučinić cited aggravating circumstances such as “the particularly cruel and vicious manner” in which the sentenced killed the prisoners, “a behavior that a human mind cannot comprehend”. Stupar was given 40 years for “the crime of omission”. As commander of the Šekovići Detachment, Stupar was “the point of contact between high command and the forces on the ground” and thus was fully aware of not only the order to kill the 1,000 Bosnian prisoners but also of its place in Karadžić and Mladić’s plan to “permanently expunge” Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica. Jakovljević and Medan were given 40 years, while Petar Mitrović was given 38, his psychological disorders (most likely PTSD) after the war suggesting to the court that “he suffered some kind of remorse for his acts”.

To convict someone of genocide, the prosecution must prove mens rea, the intent to commit genocide. This, the proof that common police and soldiers had the motive to commit genocide and were not simply following orders or acting out of passion, was probably the largest challenge facing the prosecution. The verdict indicated intent on two levels. Vučinić ruled that “the context of the conflict around Srebrenica was indisputable”. Genocidal intent is, or should be, clear to anyone involved in systematic military actions taken against a civilian population of a specific ethnic group. Furthermore, Vučinić said, the exhumation and reburial of bodies and the washing and obscuring of execution sites suggested that those involved in actions around Srebrenica were aware of the criminality of their actions. The second, specific mens rea of the seven sentenced men was pronounced decisively by the verdict: “the exceptional perseverance demonstrated in the commission of crimes of such a massive scale” required “knowledge of their participation in the permanent expunging of Bosniaks from Srebrenica”.

In the gallery of the courtroom, observers were carefully segregated during the reading of the verdict. Relations of the accused sat on the left side of the aisle, while press, the Mothers of Srebrenica, the OSCE, and other visitors sat on the right. Both sides would look down the rows at each other during the reading. As the sentences were read gasps and cries went up from our left. After the verdict was read we filed out. The relations to the accused stood silently in the lobby outside the courtroom while the Mothers of Srebrenica went in outside of the court to be interviewed by waiting TV crews.

Eight days after the architect of the Srebrenica massacre was arrested, seven of its perpetrators are given the maximum sentence for their crime in a landmark ruling. Good week for what many call a failed system.