Blagojevic Sentenced for Srebrenica Genocide

Friday, 18 November, 2005

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Merdijana Sadović

Senior Project Manager

The Hague tribunal this week handed down its second genocide sentence relating to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, handing former Bosnian Serb army officer Vidoje Blagojevic an 18-year prison term for complicity in the crime.

The trial chamber presided over by Judge Liu Daqun of China confirmed that the mass execution of Bosnian Muslim men that followed the takeover of this United Nations-protected enclave by the Bosnian Serb armed forces in July 1995 amounted to the heaviest crime of all.

“The trial chamber finds that … the crime of genocide … [was] committed in July 1995 following the fall of the Srebrenica enclave,” the judgment read.

And while the judges agreed that Blagojevic, who commanded the local Bosnian Serb army brigade at the time, was not among the principal perpetrators of this crime, they were convinced by the prosecutors’ argument that “the practical assistance he rendered had a substantial effect on the commission of the crime of genocide”, and found him “guilty of complicity by aiding and abetting” the crime.

Blagojevic’s co-accused Dragan Jokic was found guilty of aiding and abetting the crime of extermination, murder and persecution, and sentenced to nine years in prison. The indictment against him had never included a charge of genocide.

Neither of the accused appeared to be visibly moved when the sentencing judgment was handed down. Blagojevic was taking notes as usual, while Jokic sat straight on the edge of his chair, as if ready to jump. But he maintained a poker face when the judges read the verdict.

The only person who did not hide his emotions upon hearing the judgment was Blagojevic’s son Aleksandar.

“This is not just. Blagojevic is innocent!” he yelled from the packed public gallery.

The sentences are a far cry from what the prosecution had asked for the two accused in their closing statement last September – 32 years imprisonment for Blagojevic and 15 to 20 years for Jokic. Some observers have dismissed the sentences as too short, considering the gravity of the crimes the two were convicted of.

But the judgment summary read out in the court this week suggested that the judges considered both Blagojevic and Jokic to be secondary figures in the massacre, which was in their view run by the “commanders of the [Bosnian Serb army] staff and the [interior ministry] MUP”.

These findings echo the judgment delivered by the Hague court’s appeal chamber last April, when it sentenced Blagojevic’s superior, General Radislav Krstic, to 35 years in prison for aiding and abetting genocide. In this verdict, the judges officially confirmed Srebrenica as a legally proven case of genocide for the first time, and said it had been planned by the members of the Bosnian Serb army staff.

The Bosnian Serb army overran the UN safe area of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995 and within the following week expelled all of its inhabitants. It first imprisoned and then killed some 7,000 Muslim men and boys, burying them in mass graves scattered across the area.

At the time, Blagojevic was the commander of an army brigade located in the nearby Serb-controlled town of Bratunac.

The prosecutors alleged that by the virtue of his position he was responsible for all the Bosnian Muslim prisoners captured, detained or killed within his brigade’s zone of responsibility.

Some of the men were killed within the first 24 hours in the improvised refugee camp of Potocari, but the majority were captured as they tried to flee Srebrenica through the surrounding woods and later transported to the nearby town of Zvornik for execution.

Prosecutors alleged that Blagojevic - whose soldiers guarded the prisoners while they were in Bratunac - must have known the fate that awaited the prisoners. They indicted him for complicity to commit genocide, extermination, murder, persecutions and inhumane acts, both on the basis of his personal and command responsibility.

Jokic was at the time chief of engineering of the larger brigade form the nearby town of Zvornik. He was prosecuted for having assisted in planning, organising and carrying out the burials of the executed Muslims.

The trial chamber agreed that “there are acts committed by Blagojevic or members of the Bratunac brigade, which provided practical assistance to the murder operation that resulted in the death of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys”. They also agreed that Jokic “substantially assisted in the commission of the crimes by sending engineering equipment to the execution sites and members of the engineering company to take part in the burial operation”.

But the judges found that the only mode of liability that reflected the criminal conduct the two accused was “aiding and abetting” these crimes – and delivered appropriately lower sentences.

Somewhat surprisingly, the judges said they were not convinced that Blagojevic bore any command responsibility that would emerge from his function as the commander of the Bratunac brigade - but did not elaborate on their reasons for making this quite dramatic decision during the sentencing.

Instead, they announced that the detailed reasoning for this verdict would be published later, in the full judgment that is expected to be made public next week.

They suggested, however, that they agreed with the notion suggested by Blagojevic’s defence lawyer that there was more than one chain of command operating at the time in Srebrenica - the other involving security organs such as the military police.

Blagojevic’s chief of security, Momir Nikolic, was charged together with him as a member of a joint criminal enterprise to commit the Srebrenica massacres, and he pleaded guilty in 2003 to his involvement in the killing operations. He was sentenced to 27 years in prison – nine years more than his formally superior officer now received.

This appears to be a success for Blagojevic’s lawyer Michael Karnavas, who also insisted in the defence part of the case that Blagojevic did not exercise any real authority over his brigade and was just a minor player in the tragedy directed and acted mainly by military police and special police units under the command of the people close to fugitive General Ratko Mladic.

But the lawyer still wasn’t satisfied with the judgment.

“It’s a shocker,” he told IWPR, and added he would appeal despite the fact he was very pleased with the way the trial chamber handled the case up until the verdict was handed down.

Karnavas was not on speaking terms with his client for the most part of the trial, and the majority of the press conference Blagojevic’s son held in The Hague after the sentencing was spent criticising his father’s lawyer.

Jokic’s lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic announced he would appeal too, although he admitted the judgment is “within what could be expected”.

One other former Bosnian Serb officer was listed on the same initial indictment as Blagojevic and Jokic and accused of being a member of the same joint criminal enterprise to commit the massacre in Srebrenica. But Dragan Obrenovic also pleaded guilty to charges of crimes against humanity on 2003. Just like Nikolic, he had the most serious charge - complicity in genocide – dropped in return.

This week’s verdict raised some eyebrows among the Srebrenica survivors who complained the sentence was too low for such a crime, even if the two were only guilty of “aiding and abetting” it.

“When a person gets only 18 years in prison for genocide, I wonder what kind of crime one has to commit do to get a life sentence?” said Hasan Nuhanovic, a member of the Families of the Victims of the Srebrenica Genocide association.

Erik Marcussen, a genocide scholar and professor at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told IWPR he was also perplexed by the length of the sentence.

“Genocide is the ultimate crime and it is hard to comprehend a sentence so short,” he said.

Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.