Karadzic Indictment Controversy

Proposed changes to the indictment of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic have provoked a mixed reaction in Bosnia.



Bosniaks interviewed by IWPR said that prosecutors were right to add another count of genocide to the indictment in relation to atrocities committed against non-Serbs across the country in the early Nineties.



However, Bosnian Serb politicians question the decision to put more emphasis on pursuing a genocide conviction, when this charge has never been proven in related cases.



Prosecutors submitted proposed changes at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, on September 22 and are now awaiting the judges’ ruling.



The main changes proposed are that Karadzic will only be charged in connection with 27 of the 41 Bosnian municipalities mentioned in the current indictment, which was last amended in April 2000.



In the new indictment, however, an extra count of genocide has been added.



In the last amended indictment, Karadzic is only charged with one count of genocide, which encompasses crimes committed in Srebrenica in July 1995, as well as atrocities which took place across 18 Bosnian municipalities during 1991 and 1992.



In the proposed new version, these two sets of charges have been separated into separate counts, and the scope of the second count reduced to cover just 10 municipalities – Visegrad, Prijedor, Bratunac, Foca, Brcko, Kljuc, Kotor Varos, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik.



Prosecutors are also seeking to drop charges of violating the Geneva conventions – which in order to prove would require them to establish that the conflict in Bosnia was of an international nature.



The draft changes have provoked a mixed response across Bosnia.



President of the association Mothers of the Srebrenica and Zepa Enclaves Munira Subasic is pleased that prosecutors are seeking to introduce a separate count of genocide relating to atrocities committed throughout Bosnia in 1991 and 1992.



“We know that there were many prison camps in these parts of Bosnia in 1992, and we believe that ethnic cleansing carried out against Bosniaks and Croats amounted to genocide,” she said.



So far, judges at the ICTY have only found that genocide occurred in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. This finding was later confirmed in 2007 at International Court of Justice, ICJ, in Bosnia’s genocide lawsuit against Serbia.



“Those who bear the biggest responsibility for those crimes must be punished,” said Subasic.



Muharem Murselovic, a Bosniak who was detained in Serb prison camps, hopes the proposed indictment will lead to an eventual conviction which will prove that widespread genocide took place throughout Bosnia.



“It happened even before Srebrenica. The fact that in Prijedor alone [several thousand] non-Serb civilians were killed says a lot about the true dimensions of the crimes that took place in Bosnia,” he said.



The municipality of Prijedor in north-western Bosnia is where much of the Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks was carried out. About a thousand of the latter were either abused or killed at Bosnian Serb prison camps in the area.



“I hope this new [proposed] indictment against Karadzic will show this clearly and provide a true picture of what happened here,” said Murselovic.



Member of the Bosnian parliament Sadik Ahmetovic also supported the introduction of another genocide count.



“[The changes are] well-founded. Genocide does not happen only in one municipality,” he said.



“Genocide happens in a certain area, against a nation or a part of that nation, and [if accepted by judges] this amended indictment against Karadzic could help the tribunal prove that genocide against non-Serbs in Bosnia was carried out in a much wider area then just Srebrenica.”



Bosnian Serb politicians, however, have questioned the amendments.



Prime minister of the Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska, RS, Milorad Dodik wondered why the new genocide count had been proposed.



“If the ICJ has already established [in 2007] that genocide in Bosnia was limited only to Srebrenica, then this additional charge in the Karadzic indictment represents disrespect of this court and its ruling,” he said.



Serbian Democratic Party leader Mladen Bosic said he thought the changes had been proposed for political reasons.



“It is obvious that by forcing this story that genocide in Bosnia was not limited only to Srebrenica, the tribunal’s prosecutors are opening doors to Bosniak hardliners who want to change the Dayton peace agreement, to centralise Bosnia..and abolish Republika Srpska,” he said.



He added that he saw the proposed indictment as “an attempt to help Bosniaks use the Karadzic trial to achieve their wartime goals”, which Bosnian Serbs believe was a unified Bosnia with a strong central government – something they oppose.



But Karadzic’s Belgrade lawyer Svetozar Vujacic did not seem concerned about the additional genocide charge.



“We don’t have a problem with this indictment, because the more nebulous it is, the easier it will be for us to challenge it,” he said.



Meanwhile, other observers are concerned that if the more streamlined charge-sheet is passed by judges this could mean serious crimes are lost to history.



They object to prosecutors seeking to remove atrocities committed in 14 municipalities.



Slavo Kukic, a professor at the Mostar University, said that while removing certain places where crimes were committed might not influence the verdict, it could affect future generations’ knowledge of the war.



If prosecutors prove the genocide count relating to crimes committed across the country in the early nineties, he suggested that people from those municipalities which were removed from the indictment may feel short-changed.



“If the present indictment excludes whole parts of Bosnia…historians tomorrow will not have any firm proof for claims that genocide was committed in those parts of the country, too,” said Kukic.



“For example, if there is no mention in the Karadzic indictment of Posavina, from which thousands of Croats were expelled, then who will be able to claim one day that genocide against Croats happened in that part of Bosnia, too?”



Milorad Milojevic is an RFE reporter and IWPR contributor from Banja Luka.