NETHERLANDS: FORMER BOSNIAN SERB PRESIDENT BILJANA PLAVSIC ADDRESSES U.N. TRIBUNAL AFTER BEING CONDEMNED FOR SUPPORTING ETHNIC CLEANSING
Record ID:
645795
NETHERLANDS: FORMER BOSNIAN SERB PRESIDENT BILJANA PLAVSIC ADDRESSES U.N. TRIBUNAL AFTER BEING CONDEMNED FOR SUPPORTING ETHNIC CLEANSING
- Title: NETHERLANDS: FORMER BOSNIAN SERB PRESIDENT BILJANA PLAVSIC ADDRESSES U.N. TRIBUNAL AFTER BEING CONDEMNED FOR SUPPORTING ETHNIC CLEANSING
- Date: 18th December 2002
- Summary: (U3) THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS (DECEMBER 17, 2002) (REUTERS) SLV CARS ENTERING BUILDING OF UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA
- Embargoed: 2nd January 2003 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
- Country: Netherlands
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVAB1KEIE7YB6OPQYF8K2GDFOZ4V
- Story Text: Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic has addressed the U.N tribunal after being condemned for supporting ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian war but praised for taking a share of blame for atrocities reminiscent of World War Two.
Plavsic was a mouthpiece for the notorious Bosnian Serb policy of expelling Muslims and Croats from large swathes of Bosnia during the 1992-95 conflict, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright told a landmark hearing in The Hague.
"I know what I heard in her own words. I found it repugnant and didn't understand why she would be involved in things like that," said Albright, the most senior U.S.
official ever to testify at The Hague.
"It became very evident to anyone who was watching what was going on that it was reminiscent of pictures that reminded one of World War Two."
Judges at the war crimes tribunal are hearing prosecution and defence arguments this week in a three-day hearing to determine a sentence for Plavsic after she pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity.
Plavsic, once dubbed the "Iron Lady" of the Bosnian war, had taken steps to atone for her role by acknowledging she covered up crimes, ignored widespread allegations of criminal acts and publicly justified ethnic cleansing, Albright said.
"We have to show respect for those who have pleaded guilty, who have accepted that personal responsibility,"
Albright told the court's three judges.
Plavsic, 72, could face life in prison after changing her plea in October to guilty of one count of crimes against humanity for persecution of Bosnian Muslims and Croats during the war, which left 200,000 dead or missing.
The highest-ranking figure to admit atrocities and the only woman publicly indicted in the U.N. tribunal's nine-year history, Plavsic avoided trial after a surprise plea volte-face that her lawyers said was born of deep remorse.
Other charges, including genocide, have been dropped.
"Everybody knows that you can't rectify all the injustice that was done but it goes a long way," said Albright, who served as former U.S. President Bill Clinton's permanent representative at the United Nations and is a prominent supporter of the court.
"Mr. President, Your Honours, Madame Prosecutor, Council: I am thankful to have this opportunity to speak today. Nearly two years ago I came before this tribunal having been charged with participating in crimes against other human beings and even against humanity itself. I came for two reasons: to confront these charges and to spare my people, for it was clear that they would pay the price for any refusal to come. I have now had time to examine these charges and together with my lawyers conduct our own investigation and evaluation. I have now come to the belief and accept the fact that many thousands of innocent people were the victims of an organised systematic effort to remove Muslims and Croats from the territory claimed by Serbs. At the time I easily convinced myself that this was a matter of survival and self-defence. In fact, it was more. Our leadership of which I was a necessary part led an effort which victimised countless innocent people," Plavsic told the court.
"You have heard, both yesterday and today, the litany of suffering that this produced. I have accepted responsibility for my part in this. This responsibility is mine and mine alone," she added.
"The world is always imperfect and often unjust, but as long as we persevere and preserve our identity and our character we have nothing to fear. As for me, it is the members of this trial chamber that have been given the responsibility to judge, and will strive in your judgement, to find whatever justice this world can offer, not only for me, but also for the innocent victims of this war," Plavsic said.
The sentencing hearing, unprecedented at the tribunal in its scope and style, began on Monday with witnesses including Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Plavsic, wearing a large bronze cross around her neck, listened intently as a string of high-profile diplomats praised her support for the ground-breaking 1995 Dayton peace deal at grave risk to her personal safety and political popularity.
"I do think Mrs Plavsic was courageous in supporting peace implementation. Without her it would have been very different and more dangerous and almost certainly more violent," former international Balkans envoy Carl Bildt, a witness for Plavsic's defence said.
Plavsic, a former science professor, initially pleaded innocent to genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes after surrendering to the U.N. court in January 2001.
She served as deputy to Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the tribunal's most wanted men, and later took over from him.
Albright opened Tuesday's session by describing her horror as she learned of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia after spending part of her childhood in Yugoslavia as the daughter of a Czech diplomat.
"It was unimaginable that these kinds of things could be going on and that they were being done in a deliberate way, not some accident of a drunken soldier marauding, but part of some kind of plan to eradicate various groups of people,"
Albright said as Plavsic listened from the dock.
The Czech-born Albright described her shock at seeing what had seemed a harmonious multi-ethnic society descend into "barbarity".
"We saw pictures of people being taken into what could only be labelled as concentration camps...People were being driven from their homes only because of who they were."
A Muslim survivor of Serb-run detention camps, a war crimes investigator and a trauma counsellor have also testified.
Prosecutors showed harrowing footage of emaciated Bosnian Muslim inmates at a Serb-run detention camp in 1992, scenes that shocked the world and revived memories of the Nazi death camps where millions died in World War Two. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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