– All the goods must be placed in the warehouse by noon tomorrow. Not in the premises, but in other places.
– It is perceived.
In a recorded phone call from the 13 July 1995 provides Radovan Karadzic orders to a local serb commander in Srebrenica. ”The goods” is, according to the indictment against Karadzic thousands of captured muslim men and boys. ”Stores” are places where they are taken, murdered.
To the right of refugees from Srebrenica at a flooded UN camp in July 1995. Photo: Darko Bandic/AP
in Nuremberg after the second world war, have any europeans been prosecuted for worse crimes than Radovan Karadzic.
As president of the bosnian serb republic during the 90’s war, he has been singled out as responsible for the murder of over 8,000 muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995, as well as for ethnic cleansing directed against bosnian muslims and croats, and a number of other war crimes.
three years ago, came the first judgment against him at the ICTY, the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague. He was sentenced as guilty of genocide in the case of Srebrenica, but was acquitted on several other points, in the absence of unambiguous evidence.
was seen by many in Bosnia as far too mild. Itself claimed Karadzic his innocence. Both sides appealed, and today, the now 73-year-old exledaren a judgment not subject to appeal.
It will mark the end of a long journey for the former psychiatrist and poet, Karadzic, who was on the run from justice for more than ten years, between 1996 and 2007.
In several years, and posed he in Belgrade as Dragan Dabic, a alternativläkare specializes in curing sexual problems. Many days he spent in a local café where he was drinking slivovitz, singing Serbian folk songs and played the gusle, a traditional stringed instrument.
Radovan Karadzic with a white beard and thick glasses. Photo: Darko Vojinovic/AP
and thick glasses made that no-one suspected who ”the doctor” was.
At one point, he narrowly have escaped arrest in Vienna, where he found himself with a Croatian passport belonging to ”Peter Glumac,” a traveling salesman of herbal extracts and healing oils.
finally he was arrested in Belgrade on 21 July 2008. The trials in the Hague has basically been going on since then, with over 500 witnesses have been heard.
Few observers doubt that Haagdomstolen – a kind of ersättningsdomstol who takes care of the remaining cases, since the ICTY was shut down by 2017 – yet again finds Karadzic guilty. The penalty is expected to be between 40 years and life in prison.
the court makes, it will be met with a lot of emotion in Bosnia.
In the serbstyrda entity, Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik called his predecessor ”a man of strength and character”.
– Everyone knows that the court is not fair, that it does not judge in accordance with the law, said Dodik on Monday. In the 90s, he was the Karadzics opponent but during the trial in the Hague, he has testified and claimed that he was innocent.
Among the muslim survivors and relatives of Srebrenica and other towns and villages are the arguments to the opposite.
” you Understand that I’m afraid. I am concerned for Srebrenica, for if the judgment will argue that it was not a genocide, ” says Hajra Catic, president of the Srebrenica women, to the Sarajevo Times.
Radovan Karadzic, to the right, is heard in the war crimes tribunal in the Hague in 2016. Photo: Robin van Lonkhuijsen/AP
for many bosniaks, and international criminal tribunals play an important role when it comes to defining what it was that happened during the wars of the 1990s.
the Tragedy in Srebrenica was a genocide, it was concluded by both the verdict against Karadzic in 2016, and other judgments. But in the seven other cases were acquitted serbledaren from responsibility for the genocide.
the Court held that the murder, destruction and sexual violence against muslims and croats which were ”foreseeable consequences” of the Karadzics campaign, but were not included in a ”comprehensive folkmordsplan”.
can be difficult to understand for people who have lost all his kindred. Especially considering recordings from the Karadzics political speech that have been raised during the trial, where he among other things talks about Sarajevo as ”a black cauldron where muslims will die”:
” They will disappear, this people will disappear from the earth’s surface.
Regardless of whether the punishment will be 40 years or a lifetime, the chances are big that the 73-year-old Karadzic will spend the remainder of his life behind bars. But life imprisonment has a greater symbolic weight and is what most of the families of the victims hope.
– We believe that for the crimes he was behind here in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he deserves not only 40, but rather 400 years in prison, ” says Azir Osmanovic, who survived the Srebrenicamassakern as a child and who now is a curator at a minnescentrum of the genocide.
the Cemetery in Potocari outside Srebrenica in Bosnia. Photo: Amel Emric/AP
