Karadzic Genocide Charge Reinstated on Srebrenica Anniversary

The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, ruled on Thursday that the overturning of a charge accusing Karadzic of genocide in seven municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina was mistaken, and ordered the reinstatement of the charge.

Theodor Meron, the president of the ICTY and the appeals chamber, ruled that the first-instance verdict was wrong in determining that the systematic detention of Bosniaks and Croats in Bratunac, Foca, Kljuc, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik did not demonstrate that the Bosnian Serbs intended to partially destroy these ethnic groups.

Meron also said that the evidence presented by the prosecution, if viewed in the most favourable light, could lead to the conclusion that Karadzic had a genocidal intention to eliminate some of the Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats.

“The evidence shows that Bosnian Muslims and Croats were faced with conditions aimed at their destruction in detention facilities,” Meron said.

“Massive abuse, sexual harassment, lack of space and medical aid all demonstrate the wilful creation of living facilities aimed at the destruction of parts of these ethnic groups,” he said.

Meron highlighted the fact that dozens of prosecution witnesses had described how Bosniaks and Croats were seriously assaulted over a long period of time, sometimes leaving them with permanent physical deformities.

He also said that “there is evidence that Karadzic took part in meetings in which it was decided that one third of Muslims would be killed, another third forcibly converted to Christianity and the final third would leave of their own choice, which would remove all Muslims from Bosnia”.

The Hague prosecution appealed after Karadzic was acquitted of the genocide charge last year.

In June 2012, the Hague’s trial chamber ruled that the prosecution did not present sufficient evidence to find the former Bosnian Serb political leader guilty on charges of genocide in seven municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The trial chamber concluded that although there was evidence of crimes systematically carried out against Bosniaks and Croats in Bratunac, Foca, Kljuc, Prijedor, Sanski Most, Vlasenica and Zvornik, the nature, scale and context of these crimes did not point to genocidal intent on Karadzic’s part.

In the appeal, chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz argued that several legal and factual mistakes were made in the decision to acquit Karadzic and that those mistakes represented a “miscarriage of justice”.

He explained that the murders of Bosniaks and Croats in the seven municipalities in 1992 reached a level that showed that a significant part of a group was marked for destruction.  

“The trial chamber made a mistake when applying the law and failed to assess whether the evidence, including the indictee’s threats of disappearance and elimination of Bosniaks prior to the war and in 1992, was sufficient to convince a reasonable trial chamber of the existence of genocidal intent on the part of the indictee,” the appeal said.  

Meanwhile, Karadzic asked for the Hague Tribunal to reject the prosecution’s appeal, arguing that it was important “to settle once and for all what the International Court of Justice and four other trial chambers have already concluded – that the events in the municipalities of Bosnia in 1992 did not constitute genocide”.

“This does not mean that the victims did not suffer just as much, or that the crimes committed against them were not as serious,” emphasised Karadzic.

Karadzic, the former president of Bosnia’s Serb-led entity Republika Srpska and the supreme commander of its army, denies charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Representatives of Bosniak victims’ associations had expressed fears that Karadzic might be acquitted of the genocide charges on the same day as the commemorations of the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, when the remains of more than 400 victims  were buried at the memorial to the massacres in Bosnia.