International Justice/ICTY: Mar ‘09

More regional radio stations decided to rebroadcast IWPR’s radio programme Facing Jusice in March, while coverage of the Krajisnik appeal verdict stirred debate among leading commentators.

Mediha Kahric, editor of Radio Lukavac, said the decision to start airing the programme was based on an acknowledgement of the importance of giving media coverage to war crimes trials.

“It is important to report on war crimes issues in a non-partisan way if we want to start with the process of reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” she said.

Sanela Gakovic, editor-in-chief of Bosnia’s Radio Mostar, said she and her colleagues also decided to broadcast the show because of a firm conviction that stability will not return to the region until perpetrators of atrocities are seen to be held to account.

“We've started broadcasting Facing Justice because we wanted to give an opportunity to as many people as possible to hear what is going on at war crimes trials here and in The Hague,” said Gakovic.

“It is very important to deal with issues related to war crimes because all those who harmed other human beings must be held responsible for their actions and have to be brought to justice. Peace and forgiveness will come only after war crimes perpetrators have been put on trial.”

Vesela Lalos, a reporter with Belgrade daily Danas, said there should be more programmes in Serbia like Facing Justice.

“I believe it is extremely important for people in Serbia to be informed about the events from the 1990s through programmes as professional and objective as Facing Justice – particularly because only a very few media in Serbia deal with these topics so thoroughly,” he said.

Lalos added that reporting on war crimes trials and related issues is necessary for the whole ex-Yugoslavia to give people a realistic picture of what was going on during the Balkan conflicts.

“Without that, history could be [fabricated] and people from these countries would know very little about their past,” said Lalos.

Sreta Kuzmanovic, a reporter with Belgrade radio station Studio B, says reporting on war crimes is necessary for all the people in the region “especially for young people who don’t know the whole truth and who only have access to a completely distorted version, served to them by the political elites”.

In March, IWPR’s coverage of the appeal verdict against former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker Momcilo Krajisnik stirred debate among leading Balkan commentators.

In September 2006, Krajisnik was convicted of responsibility for persecutions, extermination, murder, deporation and forced transfer committed against the non-Serb population during the Bosnian 1992-95 war, but acquitted of genocide and complicity in genocide.

On March 17, the appeals chamber overturned the murder, extermination and certain of the persecutions convictions and reduced Krajisnik's sentence from 27 to 20 years.

IWPR published two articles on the appeals verdict – Krajisnik Jail Term Slashed, by Hague reporter Simon Jennings, and a comment by Sarajevo contributor and senior lecturer at the Faculty of Criminal Justice Sciences in Sarajevo, Edina Becirevic.

Becirevic’s piece, Krajisnik Appeal May Present Problems for Karadzic Prosecutors, focused on possible implications for the genocide case of the highest-profile indictee currently in custody, former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.

The two men were close political allies and Karadzic’s indictment contains many of the same crimes for which Krajisnik has been acquitted, including genocide.

In her comment, Becirevic said that the appeals verdict had exposed major weaknesses in the prosecution case against Krajisnik, particularly in relation to prosecutors’ application of joint criminal enterprise – the legal doctrine under which members of a criminal plan are considered responsible for each others’ actions.

She said that prosecutors failed to clearly identity who they meant when refering to lower-level members of this joint criminal enterprise, making it harder to prove that Krajisnik bore responsibility for their crimes.

She also argued that limiting the Krajisnik indictment to the period between July 1, 1991, to December 30, 1992, made it harder to prove that he was part of the Bosnian Serb leaders’ criminal plan, which she said was clearly pursued through the commission of crimes until the end of the war.

Commenting on the judgement – and IWPR’s coverage of it – Miljenko Dereta, director of Belgrade-based NGO Civic Initiatives, says he respects the Hague tribunal and doesn’t question its rulings.

However, he said that IWPR’s analysis of the appeal led him to question the strength of the prosecution case against Krajisnik.

“According to the experts’ comments which were presented in IWPR articles, it is clear that the charges in the indictment against Karadzic have not been fully proven. This shows that the prosecution was somewhat unprepared for this case,” he said.

In Dereta’s opinion, it is very likely that the charges that were not proven in Krajisnik’s case will be hard to prove in the case against Karadzic.

“The prosecution’s partial success in Krajisnik’s case is not such a big deal, but if they fail [to secure a conviction] in the case against Karadzic, the consequences for the stability in the Balkans could be huge.”

Sociology professor at the Sarajevo University Salih Foco said the verdict in the case of Momcilo Krajisnik “reveals numerous weaknesses of both the Hague tribunal itself and the prosecution which prepared and presented the indictment”.

He believes that prosecutors could have done more to try and prove a connection between Krajisnik and those who committed crimes.

“The indictment should have included the whole wartime leadership of Republika Srpska, the military command, the executors of the crimes and those who issued the orders,” he said.

“Had that been the case, it would have been easier to prove the crimes listed in the indictment, the perpetrators’ intentions and the consequences of their acts.”

Sefko Bajic from the Bosnian NGO Educating Citizens for Democracy, also believes the Krajisnik verdict will have an inevitable bearing on Karadzic’s case.

“Of course, this judgement will have consequences on proving Karadzic’s [alleged] responsibility for the crimes he’s charged with. It is true that Karadzic was the most exposed of all Bosnian Serb leaders during the war, but that is not enough to convict him.”