International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Convicts Radovan Karadžić (March 25, 2016) [1]
On March 25, 2016 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted [3] Radovan Karadžić, former President of the Republika Srpska and Supreme Commander of the Bosnian Serb army, of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. According to the press release [4], the judgment concerned crimes committed between 1992 and 1995 during the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The specific acts for which Karadžić was convicted include persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, inhumane acts (including forcible transfer), terror, unlawful attacks on civilians, and hostage-taking. In its decision, the Trial Chamber determined that Karadžić had participated in four overlapping joint criminal enterprises during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first, which existed between October 1991 and November 1995, included a common scheme to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory through the commission of crimes across a range of municipalities, a policy that has come to be known as “ethnic cleansing.” Specific acts in furtherance of this aim included rape, other acts of sexual violence, torture, unlawful arrests, detention in inhumane conditions, and mass executions. The second joint criminal enterprise, which occurred between April 1992 and November 1995, was a campaign intended to terrorize the civilian population of Sarajevo through artillery shelling and sniper fire. The third joint criminal enterprise involved taking United Nations personnel hostage between May 26 and June 19, 1995 in an attempt to compel the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to refrain from conducting airstrikes against Bosnian Serb targets. The fourth joint criminal enterprise regarded the July 1995 massacre at the city of Srebrenica, where approximately 30,000 Bosnian Muslims were forcibly removed from their homes and approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were systematically executed. Karadžić’s conviction for genocide was limited to the events at Srebrenica. He was acquitted on charges of genocide for events that occurred in other municipalities as part of the first joint criminal enterprise, as the Court failed to find sufficient evidence of special genocidal intent. Karadžić was sentenced to forty years imprisonment, with credit for the time he has spent in detention since 2008. Long sought by the Court, Karadžić was apprehended in 2008 in Belgrade, where, according to reports [5], he was living under an assumed identity as a practitioner of alternative medicine. The Office of the Prosecutor welcomed the conviction, saying in a press statement [6], “The truth established by this judgment will stand against continuing attempts at denying the suffering of thousands and the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.”