How Ex-Yugoslav States Funded War Crimes Defendants

The two countries which have lavished the most public money on suspects standing trial for war crimes at the International Criminal for the Former Yugoslavia are Croatia, which has spent over 28 million euro on three defendants, and Macedonia, which spent an estimated 9.5 million euro on just two men, BIRN has learned.

Macedonia’s internal conflict with Albanian rebels in 2001 only lasted for around six months, and as a result only two Macedonians were indicted by the UN-backed court in The Hague, but the impoverished Balkan state spent millions on defending, supporting and lobbying for interior minister Ljube Boskoski (who was ultimately acquitted of war crimes) and policeman Johan Tarculovski (who was convicted).

Croatia meanwhile spent more than 28 million euro on defence costs alone for its three generals, Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markac and Ivan Cermak, who were all ultimately acquitted.

Both countries made it state policy to defend their ICTY indictees and spent huge sums to give them the best chances of being freed. The apparent aim was to defend their wartime heroes, score political points at home and prevent any further damage to their international image.

The other three countries in the former Yugoslavia have spent lesser sums on larger numbers of suspects, but the total amount spent on wartime officers who were arrested and made to answer to the international court for some of the worst atrocities committed in Europe since World War II still comes to almost 40 million euro.

Shadowy, unaccountable funds also collected cash through public appeals to aid war crimes suspects in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo, but it remains unclear exactly how much money they raised and how it was spent.

Defending wartime ‘heroes’

Serbia spent 1.7 million euro of state money from 2004 to 2013 on personal allowances and doctors’ bills for the accused and travel costs for their families, rather than on their defence teams.

But BIRN’s survey revealed that out of the 26 indictees currently being paid by Belgrade, 18 of them are actually Bosnian Serb military officers who have Serbian citizenship, including General Ratko Mladic – despite the fact that Serbia firmly denies that it played any part in the Bosnian war.

A total of 640,000 euro was sent from Bosnia and Herzegovina to aid indictees, but all of this came from the Serb-led part of Bosnia, Republika Srpska, and went to help Serb suspects. Money has also been donated to families of Serb indictees through a fund called Pomoc (Help), although it has published no accounts to indicate what exactly was raised and how the money was spent.

With its difficulties in coming to any political consensus, Bosnia’s other political entity, the Bosniak-Croat Federation, has given nothing to help Bosniak or Croat suspects, officials said.

Kosovo meanwhile spent nothing on defending its six war crimes indictees, officials told BIRN, laying out a mere 16,750 euro on a welcome-home party for suspects who were acquitted.

However more than 1.5 million euro was raised to help two prominent ex-Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas turned politicians, Ramush Haradinaj and Fatmir Limaj, through public appeals which collected money in untransparent funds.

These funds also never publicly accounted to their donors for what they received or spent. BIRN managed to establish partial figures through ICTY documents and from a corruption case in Pristina over alleged improper management of the fund for Haradinaj.

In Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia, BIRN obtained its data for this investigation from public information requests.

But the other two countries – the ones that spent the most – were reluctant to give a full breakdown of what had been paid out, perhaps due to public sensitivity about lavish spending amid tough economic times in the Balkans.

Macedonia declined to give any information at all about what it had paid to support its two Hague defendants, and BIRN’s estimate of Skopje’s state spending wa