http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=849356
<http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=849356&lang=eng_news>
&lang=eng_news
Bosnian war criminal retracts confession
Associated Press
2009-01-27 12:10 AM
A Swedish magazine says former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic has
retracted her confession to crimes against humanity in a jailhouse
interview.
The Vi monthly says the 79-year-old convicted war criminal told the magazine
she had confessed to being guilty at The Hague war tribunal "so I could
bargain" on other charges and that she's innocent.
In pre-released excerpts of an interview to be published Feb. 2, the
magazine on Monday quoted Plavsic as saying, "I sacrificed myself."
Plavsic is serving an 11-year sentence in Sweden for planning ethnic
cleansing in Serb-dominated areas during the 1992-1995 Balkans war. She is
due for release in 2013, and it's unclear whether she will seek to formally
retract her confession before the court.
============================================================================
=========================
The Local: Sweden's news in English
Bosnian war criminal: 'I did nothing wrong'
Published: 26 Jan 09 14:57 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/17162/20090126/
Dictionary tool Double click on a word to get a translation
<http://www.thelocal.se/15662/20081113/>
Convicted war criminal and former Bosnian leader Biljana
<http://www.thelocal.se/tag/biljana_plavsic> Plavsic has retracted a
confession made to the Hague war crimes tribunal in 2001.
Together with Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian leader
Biljana Plavsic is regarded as one of the masterminds behind the Balkan wars
of 1991 – 2001.
She was tried by the Hague war crimes tribunal in 2001. After reversing her
original “not guilty” plea to the eight prosecution charges and confessing
to crimes against humanity, Plavsic was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Her
sentence is being served at Hinseberg prison in Örebro in central Sweden.
But in a rare interview with a Swedish magazine, Plavsic retracted her
confession.
She now claims to have pleaded guilty in an attempt to have the remaining
charges against her, including those of genocide, dropped.
“I sacrificed myself. I have done nothing wrong. I pleaded guilty to crimes
against humanity so I could bargain for the other charges. If I hadn't, the
trial would have lasted three, three and-a-half years. Considering my age
that wasn't an option,” the now 79-year-old Plavsic told Vi magazine.
Her sudden reversal caused much controversy at the time. Plavsic claims her
lawyer, Canadian-Serb Krstan Simic, advised her to change her plea in order
to secure a milder sentence from the tribunal.
“I wanted my husband to defend me in Hague. He was a criminal defence lawyer
but had nearly gone blind from glaucoma, so that was impossible,” says
Plavsic. “I didn't know it at the time but he [Krstan Simic] was a business
lawyer. Unlike him, my husband would have been able to prove my innocence.”
Her admission of guilt was a key factor in the Hague tribunal's decision to
lower her sentence and drop the remaining charges. Had she not pleaded
guilty, and taking all eight charges against her into account, Plavsic would
likely have been sentenced to 20-25 years in prison rather than the 11 she
is now serving.
In the interview with Vi magazine, Plavsic describes life at Sweden's
Hinseberg prison as “worse than what the Nazi Albert Speer endured in
Spandau prison”.
“None of the other prisoners have read a single book. And yet we are treated
equally. Your country has nothing to be proud of,” says Plavsic.
She also talks about her former fellow Bosnian leaders, including Radovan
Karadzic who was arrested and brought to trial in July 2008.
“Karadzic is a coward,” says Plavsic. “He and his cronies were criminals,
acting like a group of gangsters. It will all become known eventually.”
Plavsic is a professor of biology and enjoyed a distiguished career at the
University of Sarajevo. From 1996 to 1998 she served as the president of the
Republika Srpska, now one of the two political entities that make up the
state Bosnia <http://www.thelocal.se/tag/bosnia> -Herzegovina.
During the war, Plavsic defended the mass killings of Bosnian non-Serbs as a
“natural phenomenon”. She has been accused of playing a key role in the
massacre at Srebrenica in 1995, where at least 8000 Muslims were killed.
In a photograph presented as evidence at the Hague tribunal, she is seen
stepping over a dead body to greet notorious Serbian warlord Zeljko 'Arkan'
Raznatovic with a kiss.
Daniel Uggelberg Goldberg, Vi magazine <http://www.vi-tidningen.se/>
Biljana Plavsic was interviewed by Vi's reporter Margaretha Nordgren
