<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/news/hague.php> World Court absolves Serbia of genocide charge By Marlise Simons Monday, February 26, 2007
THE HAGUE: The International Court of Justice on Monday for the first time called the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 an act of genocide, but determined that Serbia itself was not guilty of the enormous crime. Nonetheless it linked Serbia to the genocide by saying that Belgrade could and should have prevented it and, in its aftermath, should have punished the Bosnian Serbs who systematically executed nearly 8,000 men in July 1995. The ruling was in the first case in which one country had sued another for genocide. The civil suit, in which Bosnia sued Serbia for genocide, may well have been the most complex in the 60-year history of the World Court, which is a part of the United Nations. It concluded after more than two months of hearings and nearly 10 months of sometimes tense deliberations by 15 international judges. The ruling freed Serbia of the lasting stigma of being labeled a genocidal nation and absolved it from having to pay hefty war reparations, as demanded by Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, Bosnia obtained what it said it wanted from the outset: "a recognition of Serbia's guilt." The court's ruling, which took almost three hours to read out in court, repeatedly cited the massacre at Srebrenica, defining it as genocide. It also stressed that large-scale killings and abuse of Bosnian Muslims had taken place with the financial and military support of Serbia during the 1990s war that broke up Yugoslavia. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, the president of the court, reading a summary of the ruling prepared by its 15 judges, described the close ties between Serbia and the Bosnian Serb forces and said that the Serbian leaders in Belgrade, and President Slobodan Milosevic above all, "were fully aware of the deep-seated hatred which reigned between the Bosnian Serbs and the Muslims in the Srebrenica region" and that massacres were likely to occur. Yet the Serbs did nothing to stop atrocities or prevent the Srebrenica massacre, "claiming they were powerless, which hardly tallies with their known influence" over the Bosnian Serb forces. The ruling concluded that Serbia thereby violated the Genocide Convention to which it is a party. The court found no convincing evidence that any Serbian leader or organ of the state of Serbia had the deliberate intent to "destroy in whole or in part" the Bosnian Muslim population, which is key to the definition of genocide. The ruling, Higgins stressed, is binding and final, allowing no appeal. The court said that other offenses committed against Bosnians may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, but that it had no jurisdiction over them. It did not list specific killings or the number of victims. International organizations have reported that more than 100,000 people died in the fighting from 1992 to 1995, two-thirds of them Bosnian Muslims. "This is a moral victory, certainly, but less of a legal victory," said Alain Pellet, a spokesman for the Bosnian legal team. "But violations by one state against another have now been determined and many atrocities have been cited. Genocide is not the only atrocity." President Boris Tadic of Serbia welcomed the ruling and then urged his Parliament to condemn the Srebrenica massacre. But that may be difficult because nationalist groups continue to deny that the massacre took place. Tadic said it was "very important for Serbia and its citizens" that the nation was found not guilty of genocide, but he lamented that once again Serbia had been mentioned in the context of war crimes and genocide. In a statement after the session, Higgins noted that the findings did not completely satisfy either side. "That does not mean, of course, that the court has been seeking a political compromise," she said. All the same, the ruling, even if strictly based on the law, hews close to the political wishes of Western countries that want to pull Serbia into a wider Western European community, rather than seeing it isolated as a pariah state with extreme nationalists growing in strength. NATO last year invited Serbia to join its Partnership for Peace venture and some European Union countries want to start membership talks with Belgrade, demanding first though that it hand over Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander at the time of the Bosnian war. He has been charged with genocide at the UN war crimes tribunal. The court said that Serbia was in violation of the UN Genocide Convention because it had not arrested Mladic and handed him over to the war crimes tribunal. It urged Belgrade to do so immediately. The arrest of the general, a fugitive for 10 years, might strengthen the hand of Serbian reformers who want to rid themselves of the Mladic burden. On most counts, the World Court took a cautious route. It stayed close to the findings of the UN Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, which has found two Bosnian Serb officers guilty of genocide in the case of the Srebrenica massacre and it repeatedly cited tribunal evidence, calling its methods rigorous. But the last word on the role of the Serbian leadership in Bosnia has not been said. Although Milosevic died last year before the end of his four-year trial, other senior Serbian political and military leaders will still stand trial at the war crimes tribunal. The tribunal has part of the wartime records of the Supreme Defense Council, which included Yugoslavia's military and political leaders. But tribunal officials say that part of the minutes of the meetings have been blacked out and some portions are missing. Three meetings of the Council following the Srebrenica massacres were almost entirely blacked out. Serbia made a deal with the tribunal that only its judges and lawyers would see them. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
