Landmark Ruling in Srebrenica Killings

A Belgrade court ruled that the four, all members of the notorious paramilitary unit 'Scorpions', executed six Muslim prisoners aged between 16 and 36 after the Bosnian Serb Army overran the Muslim enclave Srebrenica in July 1995 at the end of a three-year war in Bosnia.

{styleboxjp}The evidence against the men was unique -- the video tape of the execution one among their own had filmed. The tape of the execution that took place only days after Srebrenica fell shows the 'Scorpions' men ordering their Muslim prisoners to kneel down, hands tied behind the backs, and then shot to death{/styleboxjp}.

The tape, which has been publicly aired since, shows the killers laughing, smoking and shouting at the men, and kicking them around.

Two killers, Slobodan Medic and Branislav Medic (relatives), were sentenced to 20 years in prison. Pero Petrasevic, their aide, and the only one who showed remorse in the course of the trial, was given a 13-year sentence.

Aleksandar Medic, another relative of Slobodan and Branislav, who prevented the six Muslims from running away, was given five years. He was also the driver for the group.

A fifth accused, Aleksandar Vukov, was allowed to go free after the special war crimes court in Belgrade said there was no evidence that he participated in the killing.

This has been a landmark case in many respects, lawyers say. One was the fact that the execution was video-taped. The video was discovered only in 2005, ten years after it was filmed.

A human rights activist from Belgrade found it in the western town Sid, where members of the 'Scorpions unit continued to live freely even though they were suspected of war crimes in Bosnia. The execution video had been available on rent for years at a local video arcade.

"Those people (the perpetrators) were calmly living among us for 10 years," spokesman for the Serbian war crimes prosecution Bruno Vekaric told IPS. "This was a landmark case, because we had to say that as a society we are able to distance ourselves from such people and to sentence those who participated in genocide."

The trial came only months after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Serbia did not commit genocide in the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia. But the ruling said Serbia did nothing to prevent it.

The ICJ also said that genocide was not committed in the whole area of Bosnia, as the plaintiff country Bosnia-Herzegovina claimed, but only in Srebrenica.

{styleboxjp float=left}The Bosnian Serb army and its commander Ratko Mladic, who is still in hiding, were held responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica{/styleboxjp}.

In this case, the video of the cold-blooded execution of the six -- two were boys aged 17, while the others were in their 20s and 30s -- was first shown in the trial of late leader Slobodan Milosevic on Jul. 1, 2005.

Milosevic was tried before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague in the Netherlands. He died in March 2006. His trial never came to a conclusion.

Only days after the presentation before the ICTY, the footage was shown on all television channels in the region.

In Serbia, it silenced many people who had believed the Milosevic wartime propaganda that the Srebrenica massacre never happened.

In Bosnia, it led to identification of the six killed. Their bodies were discovered in a shallow grave in 1999.

But the sentencing brought disappointment to the families of the victims who had been attending the trial since it began in December 2005.

Safeta Muhic, whose cousin Azmir Alispahic (17) was among those killed, told reporters that "the sentence is shameful." She added, "We came here to seek justice and we did not get it."

Azmir's mother Nura Alispahic said that "all those people will walk free one day, but nothing will make my son come from the ground."

Serbian human rights activist Natasa Kandic, who represented the families of the victims, told IPS that "the sentences did not provide justice for victims. Such sentences are simply unacceptable."

Reactions were similar in neighbouring Bosnia. Head of the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica Munira Subasic told Sarajevo radio that "the sentence provided no justice for those who suffer. It amounts to humiliation of the victims."

Many of the reporters who covered this trial since it began were appalled by the lack of remorse among the main accused. Slobodan Medic said during the trial that he "would have killed the one who filmed the video like a rabbit" had he known someone was taking a film. He had nothing to say about those he killed. (END/IPS/EU/IP/HD/VZ/SS/07)

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency

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