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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Tribunal acquits Karadzic of genocide
(FILES) This file picture taken on August 29, 2008 shows Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. The UN's Yugoslav war crimes court said on October 6, 2009 that the genocide trial of Karadzic will start two days later than the October 19 scheduled date and may face further delays. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic has told a UN court that he intends to boycott the start of his war crimes and genocide trial next week, his lawyer said on October 22, 2009. AFP PHOTO /ANP/ VALERIE KUYPERS ***NETHERLANDS OUT -- BELGIUM OUT*** (Photo credit should read VALERIE KUYPERS/AFP/Getty Images) (POSTMEDIA AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal acquitted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of one charge of genocide Thursday but upheld 10 other war-crimes counts related to atrocities in Bosnia's bloody war.
While the decision was a setback for prosecutors and angered survivors in Bosnia, the 10 pending charges against Karadzic include another genocide count covering his alleged involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
The charge that was dismissed Thursday covered the mass killings, expulsions and persecution by Serb forces of Muslims and Croats from Bosnian towns early in the country's 1992-95 war, which left 100,000 dead. Presiding Judge Oh-Gon Kwon said prosecutors did not provide enough evidence to "be capable of supporting a conviction of genocide in the (Bosnian) municipalities."
At the halfway stage of Karazdic's long-running trial, judges said there was enough evidence to uphold charges, including murder and persecution, in the early stages of the war, but the killings did not rise to the level of genocide, which requires prosecutors to prove intent to wipe out a specific group in whole or part.
Prosecutors finished presenting their evidence in May, and earlier this month, Karadzic had asked judges to dismiss all 11 counts, saying prosecutors had failed to prove their case.
Survivors of the Bosnian war said the decision could set back any reconciliation.
"We are shocked and disappointed," said Edin Ramulic, who heads an association of victims in Bosnia's Prijedor region. "We have no reason to hope now that the Serbs will go through catharsis and acknowledge that the non-Serbs in Prijedor had been killed, tortured, exterminated, raped."
Prof. Lara J. Nettelfield, a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Exeter in Britain, who has written a book about the tribunal, called the ruling by the court disappointing but not surprising.
"Judges (at the tribunal) have consistently refused to support the prosecution's charge of genocide anywhere but in Srebrenica," Nettelfield said.
The court has repeatedly ruled that the massacre in Srebrenica was genocide, but has never convicted any suspect of genocide for the campaign of killings in the Bosnia towns and villages at the outset of the war.
Karadzic's trial started in 2009 and prosecutors rested their case in May. The trial will continue later this year on the 10 remaining counts, and he will begin his defence on Oct. 16.
-- The Associated Press
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 29, 2012 A25
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