WAR CRIMES AND ATROCITIES (True Crime) (28 page)

The Trial Of Dusko Tadic

1995–99

The case of Dusko Tadic is an important one in that it was the first case to be brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICTY was set up in May 1993 by the UN Security Council for the sole purpose of bringing to trial those responsible for violations of international humanitarian law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Its main aim is to bring justice to the victims of the Bosnian war, which saw ethnic cleansing, genocide and many other serious war crimes.

It is probably hard for people to digest, but the 20th century has seen four times as many civilian victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity than there were soldiers killed in all the international wars combined. When the world cried ‘never again’ after the atrocities of the Nazi holocaust, it was hoped that the prosecution of the Nazi leaders for their monstrous actions at Nuremberg, would put a stop to such barbarity – but this was not to be the case. Between the years 1992 and 1995, atrocities were committed by all sides against all sectors of the population in Bosnia– Herzegovina. Worst of all these atrocities was the gender-selective mass executions of civilians and systematic brutality, particularly against the Muslim population. This is the trial of just one man who was guilty of breaching international law and his complete disregard for his fellow human beings.

BRIEF BACKGROUND

Dusko Tadic was born on 1 October, 1955, in the town of Kozarac. He was born into a military family, his father having been a hero in World War II. His mother had been a detainee at Jasenovac, which was the largest concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during World War II. Tadic became a member of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) in 1990.

The SDS attacked the town of Prijedor on 30 April, 1992, with the aid of both the police and military forces. This resulted in the party taking control of Prijedor and Kozarac, which was approximately 10 km (6 miles) to the east. The attack on Kozarac lasted for two days and killed approximately 800 civilians, which was a large proportion of the 4,000 inhabitants of the town. Once the SDS were in control of the town, they started to raid any homes of the non-Serb population and expelled them from the area. They were made to leave with whatever possessions they could carry and walk to camps at Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, and they were subjected to harsh treatment on their already arduous journey. When they arrived at the camps their hardships were to continue as they faced the most appalling conditions.

Tadic was accused of not only having supported the troops in their attack, but being an active member of the SDS and the paramilitary forces and having actively taking part in all stages of the attack on Kozarac. He was further held responsible for the mis-treatment of the civilians in the camps, particularly at Omarska. Before the conflict started there were approximately 50,000 Muslims and 6,000 Croats living in the district, but following the ethnic cleansing their numbers were reduced to around 6,000 and 3,000 respectively. Any who remained in the area were forced to live under the most abject conditions.

BROUGHT TO TRIAL

After the cleansing campaign, Tadic was elected president of the local council of the SDS on 15 August, 1992. The following year he was sent to the war zone near Gradacac, but he lasted only one day before going into hiding to avoid being drafted into military service. In August 1993, Tadic went to Nuremberg and then on to Munich where he lived until 12 February, 1994. He was arrested by the Germany police and held in custody until April 1995, when he was transferred to the ICTY in The Hague to face trial.

The trial by the ICTY was the first international war crimes trial since Nuremberg. Security was tight, and the state-of-the-art courtroom at The Hague was sealed off from the spectators’ gallery by bulletproof glass. Television crews were given licence to film, and were placed around the room ready to beam the proceedings to closed-circuit monitors in the building and outside in the press tent. To avoid any language problems there were simultaneous video and audio translations into English, French and Serbo-Croat, and a nearly instantaneous transcript of the proceedings appeared on a monitor that was available to everyone taking part in the trial. The same monitor was used to show any available documentary evidence.

Tadic first appeared before the court on 26 April, 1995, and pleaded not guilty to the 34 counts of crimes against humanity. Three of the counts were withdrawn shortly after the trial started, which brought more than 150 witnesses to give evidence. Tadic, who claimed he was a victim of mistaken identity, knew his fate rested with a three-judge panel headed by Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, a former US federal judge from Texas. He faced a maximum life sentence if found guilty.

Almost two years later, on 7 May, 1997, Dusko Tadic was found guilty of crimes against humanity on six counts and of violations of the laws or customs of war on five counts. The prosecution made it clear that despite the fact that Tadic’s victims had already suffered the horrors of a two-day artillery bombardment, he still sent them to camps where he was fully aware of the horrific conditions that awaited them. They felt that Tadic had a flagrant disregard for human life and the suffering of others and that he should bear full responsibility for the deaths and the extremely violent and cruel way in which the detainees were treated.

When the sentence was read out it said:

. . . that the crimes consisted of killings, beatings and forced transfer by Dusko Tadic as principal or as an accessory, as well as his participation in the attack on the town of Kozarac in opstina Prijedor, in northwestern Bosnia.

The sentences pronounced by the Trial Chamber ranged from 6 to 20 years. Tadic and his defence team appealed against the sentences.

When the trial went to the Appeals Chamber in July 1999, it proved beyond reasonable doubt that Tadic was responsible for the crimes with which he had been charged, and it found him guilty on ten counts. In November, Tadic was given revised sentences ranging from 6 to 25 years for each of the additional charges.

Tadic appealed for a second time and, although the Appeals Chamber partially reversed their decision, he was finally sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and the case was closed. He was transferred to Germany to serve his term of imprisonment with a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years.

As with all crimes against humanity, it is hard to understand how a person, who probably grew up without any ethnic prejudices, could end up being accused of genocide and violations against his own neighbours. Ironically, the very groups of people who were accused of these crimes were often seen to be sitting together at The Hague either sharing meals, jokes or simply playing cards with their former rivals.

The Trial Of Slobodan Milosevic

2002–2006

The trial of the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, started on 12 February, 2002, and has been called one of the most important war crimes trials since the Nazi leaders were prosecuted in Nuremburg after World War II. It was being held by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, and it was hoped that it would force the man who had been nicknamed the ‘Butcher of the Balkans’ to face the brutality of his crimes committed under the guise of war. Many believed that they would never actually see Milosevic stand in the dock, as the trial had been delayed by his ill health, so when the trial actually commenced there were great sighs of relief among those who believed he was the architect of all the bloodshed.

THE CHARGES

Milosevic was facing three indictments – one relating to atrocities carried out in Kosovo in 1999, another for crimes in Croatia between 1991 and 1992 and the third – the most serious of the three – alleged genocide in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995.

In brief, the Bosnia indictment accused Milosevic of the following offences:

Genocide

Crimes against humanity

Grave breaches of the Geneva convention

Violations of the law or customs of war

The Tribunal gave as one example the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where several thousands of Muslim men and boys were captured and transported away for execution.

The Croatia indictment included:

Crimes against humanity

Grave breaches of the Geneva convention

Violations of the law or customs of war

Under this indictment, Milosevic was held responsible for the murder of hundreds of civilians and the expulsion of over 170,000 non-Serbs who were forced to leave their home towns.

For the atrocities at Kosovo, Milosevic along with four of his associates faced:

Crimes against humanity

Violations of the law or customs of war

According to this indictment, Milosevic and his colleagues were directly responsible for the deportation of 800,000 Kosovo Albanians and the murders of about 600 individuals. As commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav army, Milosevic had direct responsibility for the behaviour of of the Serbian security forces under his jurisdiction. The four other people charged alongside Milosevic were, the Serbian president, Milan Milutinovic, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister, Nikola Sainovic, the Yugoslav’s army former chief-of-staff, General Dragoljub Ojdanic and the former serbian minister of the interior, Vlajko Stojiljkovic.

Prosecutors at the trial accused Milosevic of ‘medieval savagery’, stating that it was his search for power that motivated him to commit such atrocities.

MILOSEVIC MAKES A MOCKERY

Milosevic, right from day one, made a mockery out of the court proceedings. He strongly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the UN court and showed no respect whatsoever towards the residing judge. After Milosevic refused to enter a plea or indeed appoint a lawyer on his behalf, the Trial Chamber entered a plea of ‘not guilty’ for him. They also appointed three international lawyers as ‘friends of the court’ to make sure that Milosevic’s legal rights were not violated.

Milosevic, speaking in English, told the court that he was intending to call 1,631 witnesses in his defence, including the former US president, Bill Clinton, and the British prime minister, Tony Blair. However, it was very uncertain that these influential people would actually turn up. The trial showed that Milosevic still had many loyal supporters among the Serbs and Yugoslavs. During the trial, Milosevic had a team in Belgrade that helped him, often sending information from secret police files.

The complex trial lasted for more than four years and involved scores of documents, photographs, graphic videotapes showing mangled bodies and mass graves, and intercepted audio communications. Forensic teams from around the world managed to exhume 4,000 bodies, although the estimated death toll is considered to be far higher. Milosevic was careful and did not leave any direct trails that would connect him to any of the crimes or even to the commanders and units that carried out the atrocities, so the prosecution had a difficult job ahead of them. In fact, it took the prosecution two years to presents its case in the first part of the trial, which covered the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

The whole trial was a thoroughly controversial affair, and it produced many conflicting and often strange testimonies. For example, a controversial statement was made by Rade Markovic, who was the former head of the Department of State Security of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior (the Serbian Secret Service). Prior to being brought to The Hague, Markovic had been held in a Belgrade jail for 17 months. When he was asked to testify he told the court that he had been tortured in jail to force him to agree to give false testimony against Milosevic. He told them that he was offered a change of identify and a comfortable new life if he was prepared to lie.

A BREAKTHROUGH

In October 2001, the investigators involved in the Milosevic case had a major breakthrough. They released the names of several Serbian officials, who had been under close scrutinization, as members of Milosevic’s ‘joint criminal enterprise’. Rather than face criminal indictments, it was believed that these men would rather cooperate with the investigators. By the end of the year, literally dozens of former Serbian officials, some of whom had been close associates of Milosevic, had agreed to testify against him. Many of these men were considered to be the former backbone of Milosevic’s ‘secret’ state and could therefore be influential in the outcome of the tribunal. It was felt that if these men would name and shame the people who actually ordered the killings, it would help the prosecution convict Milosevic. However, Milosevic proved to be quite a formidable force when it came to attacking the prosecution. He skilfully manipulated the witnesses and he seemed to have a natural ability to throw his opponents off the scent.

Towards the end of his trial Milosevic started to complain of health problems and demanded that he be given a provisional release to Russia for treatment. His request was denied and the tribunal’s own doctor was ordered to examine him. His ill health caused many intermissions and prolonged the trial by at least six months. The trial wasn’t resumed until October 2004 and the former Soviet premier, Nikolai Ryzhkov, became the first high-profile witness to testify for the defence. Had Milosevic been able to complete his defence, it was believed that he would have gone down the route that NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia was aggressive, thus making it a war crime under international law. For example, the bombing of a Serbian state television building in April 1999, in which 16 people died, was a deliberate attack on a civilian target.

THE
 
WORST
 
POSSIBLE
 
OUTCOME

The death of Slobodan Milosevic on 12 March, 2006, brought both shock and disappointment to all who were associated with his ongoing war crimes trial. He was found by guards in his prison cell at the detention centre for the International Criminal Tribunal, and although there were rumours that he had poisoned himself, this was later disproved. His wife and family blamed the tribunal for his death, saying that they had refused him medical treatment.

Although the outcome was not what the prosecutors had hoped for, and many felt Milosevic’s death was his ultimate victory over justice, the trial in itself was quite a milestone for justice. No other head of state had ever been tried for such crimes in modern history, so the fact that he was brought to trial is ultimately more important than its final outcome. The fact that Milosevic was forced to come face to face with his actions should pave the way for an individual’s right to freedom from fear. Hopefully the trial is just a stepping stone to bringing other brutal dictators before the scales of justice.

FURTHER INDICTMENTS

In addition to Milosevic, eight former Serbian policemen, including former senior police commanders, went on trial in October 2006, on charges relating to the worst massacres of the Kosovo war. They were accused of executing 48 ethnic Albanian citizens, all, with the exception of one, from the same family. The killings took place in Suva Reka in March 1999. The victims included 14 children, two babies, a pregnant woman and a 100-year-old woman. Their bodies were all discovered several years later in a mass grave at a police training camp near Belgrade.

In the same week that the trial started, Serbia’s deputy prime minister, finance minister, health minister and energy minister all resigned from the government of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. This was due to the ongoing inability to arrest the fugitive Ratko Mladic, who was the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s army chief throughout the Bosnian war. Mladic has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity, including the massacre of some 7,500 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995. Mladic disappeared from view when Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in 2001 and it is believed that he is being protected by sympathizers within Serbia.