Serbian Public Broadcaster Airs War Crime Convicts’ Denials

Nikola Sainovic, Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic and Sreten Lukic in the Hague Tribunal courtroom in January 2014. Photo: EPA/PETER DEJONG

Two convicted war criminals, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic and Yugoslav Army general Vladimir Lazarevic, appeared on Serbia’s public broadcaster Radio-Television Serbia on Tuesday evening and denied that they committed the crimes of which they were convicted.

Sainovic and Lazarevic were among the guests on the RTS discussion programme ‘Upitnik’ (‘Question Mark’), which focused on the anniversary of the start of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999.

The Western military alliance launched its air strikes in an attempt to make Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to end his military campaign against the Kosovo Liberation Army, which involved widespread ethnic cleansing. But as the bombing continued, Milosevic’s forces committed a series of massacres of ethnic Albanian civilians.

Asked about these crimes during the RTS programme, Sainovic insisted “those were acts by individuals”, for which the Yugoslav authorities could not be held responsible.

“Someone had to pay for that, and we paid,” he added.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia sentenced Sainovic to 18 years in prison and Lazarevic to 14 years for the murders, deportations and inhumane treatment of Kosovo Albanians during the war in 1999.

But Lazarevic dismissed the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in the spring of 1999 to avoid the crackdown by Yugoslav troops and police.

Asked about the ethnic Albanian refugees, Lazarevic told RTS: “We knew that they would stage an exodus.”

Sainovic was released in August 2015 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, and Lazarevic in December 2015.

Also convicted of the same crimes were Yugoslav Army generals Nebojsa Pavkovic and Dragoljub Ojdanic and Serbian police general Sreten Lukic.