BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA: Tribunal Indicts Karadzic, Mladic

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 25 1995 (IPS) - The U.N. tribunal judging war crimes throughout the former Yugoslavia further complicated the crisis Tuesday with its indictments of Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic.

Both men must now stand before the International Tribunal on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, located at the Hague. They are the highest-level officials to be accused of war crimes in either the 1991 Croatia war or the three-and-a-half year Bosnia war.

Now, the United Nations is in the sticky position of seeking to negotiate peace with leaders that a U.N.-appointed body has decided should be tried as potential war criminals.

Even thornier is the fact that the indictments against Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic and military commander Mladic include violations of the Geneva Convention regarding warfare last May when Bosnian Serb troops held 284 U.N. troops hostage.

The indictments, read at The Hague by chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone, charged Karadzic and Mladic with genocide and crimes against humanity, including atrocities and sniper attacks against Bosnian civilians and the use of U.N. hostages as human shields.

Croatian Serb leader Milan Martic and 21 other Serbs were also indicted for crimes ranging from the “cluster-bomb” attacks last May on the Croatian capital, Zagreb, to the alleged killing and rape of Bosnian detainees at Keraterm “camp” in 1992.

The genocide charges include the internment of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the Omarska, Keraterm, Luka and Susica detention camps, and the targetted killings, deportations, looting and other harassment of Muslims and Croats.

“The investigation in respect of Dr. Karadzic and Gen. Mladic is not limited to the matters discussed in the indictment and is still ongoing,” Goldstone said from the Hague.

The charges accuse all the main Serb separatist leaders of authorising or participating in the most serious war crimes on the books. The United Nations may thus have to fend off charges from the Bosnian Serb separatists that they are demonising their leaders while still seeking to play a neutral role in Bosnia.

But U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi insisted here that, despite the indictments, the United Nations would continue to deal with Karadzic and Mladic and not seek their immediate arrest.

“It is a dilemma,” Fawzi conceded, “but when you’re in a war situation, you negotiate with all parties in the field of operations.” He said “The United Nations will continue to seek peace in the former Yugoslavia with all the parties involved.”

Fred Eckhard, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers, added that U.N. officials in Bosnia do not have “the luxury to pick (their) interlocutors.”

Fawzi said the more than 26,000 U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) troops in Bosnia had no mandate to arrest either Karadzic or Mladic who often meet with UNPROFOR commanders in peace talks or negotiations for safe passage of convoys.

However, he added, “If they leave their countries, they will be exposed to arrest.”

Goldstone also sought to separate the indictments from any general blame directed at the Bosnian Serbs, who currently control some 70 percent of Bosnia and have been responsible for the bulk of the 200,000 deaths in the war.

“The reference in the indictments to ‘Bosnian Serbs’ pertains to the Bosnian Serbs who are in the military or civilian service of the authorities in Pale,” Goldstone said. “No reference is intended to those Bosnian Serbs who neither support nor associate themselves with the commission of the crimes charged.”

The prosecutor added that his office will also seek to investigate war crimes by Croatian troops during the May offensive against Croatian Serbs in Croatia’s Western Slavonia region.

But work in that case and in any investigation of atrocities by Bosnia’s Muslim-led government is still proceeding, he said.

Human rights groups generally approved the Tuesday indictments.

Andrew Clapham, the U.N. representative of Amnesty International, said his agency now wanted to see the tribunal take firm action to prosecute all officials guilty of war crimes.

“At a moment when the international community hesitates to defend Bosnians from ethnic slaughter, the indictments represent hope that, at the very least, the authors of this genocide will be brought to justice,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

He said the indictments may also further the chances for peace in Bosnia by replacing current hostility based on collective, ethnic guilt with individualised guilt.

But he warned that the United Nations must punish Serbia and Montenegro, who have supported the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, with stiffer sanctions if they do not turn over suspects and information to help the tribunal’s work.

“Unless the major powers make Belgrade’s active cooperation with the tribunal a prerequisite for any suspension, lifting or easing of (U.N.) sanctions, they will condemn the tribunal to writing the history of atrocities in Bosnia rather than bringing their architects to justice,” Roth said.