http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/tri/tri_283_2_eng.txt
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Tribunal Update
REGIONAL REPORT: Bosnia Digests Plavsic Plea
Serb leader's admission of war crimes guilt is
condemned and applauded in equal
measure.
By Amra Kebo in Sarajevo and Gordana Katana in Banja
Luka (TU No. 283, September
30 -October 5, 2002) Bosnians gave mixed reactions to
Biljana Plavsic's decision last
week to plead guilty to one of eight war crimes charges
facing her at The Hague.
In doing so, Plavsic became the first former
high-ranking Bosnian Serb official to admit
responsibility for atrocities committed in the entity
during the war of the early Nineties.
This reversal of her earlier not-guilty plea for crimes
against humanity prompted the
prosecutor to drop all other charges, including those
of genocide.
Plavsic had been jointly charged with former Bosnian
Serb parliamentary speaker
Momcilo Krajisnik on eight counts spanning three
articles on The Hague statute: crimes
against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of
war and genocide.
Observers believe Plavsic has struck a deal with
prosecutors, agreeing to testify against
Slobodan Milosevic and Krajisnik in return for a
lighter sentence. Plavsic and tribunal
officials have both strongly denied the suggestion.
RS officials predictably condemned the plea change.
"Biljana Plavsic's behaviour has
nothing to do with justice and tribunal law," said Serb
member of the Bosnian
presidency, Mirko Sarovic. "I think that this is a
classic trade-off, so one can expect
Plavsic to appear as witness in Milosevic's trial."
Some in RS are concerned that if former leaders admit
to war crimes, the legitimacy of
the entity may be called into question. But its
premier, Mladen Ivanic, was quick to
quash these fears. "Trials in The Hague are trials of
individuals, and not trials of
institutions, entities or states," he said.
There was some support for Plavsic's move among
moderate Serbs. Deputy chairman of
the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Slobodan Popovic
stressed that it "only goes to
confirm what we have been saying all along, which is
that crimes did happen during the
war and that political and military establishment of
the Serb Republic of the time bears
responsibility for them."
While most of their leaders denounced Plavsic's action,
ordinary Bosnian Serbs
appeared divided over it. "Shame be on her," said
Dragoljub Ninkovic, an unemployed
refugee from Glamoc. "Why cannot she see the crimes
committed against us?" Banja
Luka pensioner Mihajlo Markovic said, "It is good that
someone has finally mustered
strength to acknowledge that crimes did happen in our
entity too and to apologise to
victims."
Officials from the Bosniak-Croat dominated entity, the
Federation, largely welcomed
Plavsic's admission, but were angry that prosecutors
want to drop the genocide charge.
Chairman of the Federal Commission for Missing Persons,
Amor Masovic, said it all
smacked of a plea-bargaining deal which, he insisted,
should not be available for high
ranking suspects like Plavsic, "Could you imagine the
Allies negotiating with Rudolf
Hess, for example? It is no good if criminals of that
calibre get pardoned."
Kasim Trnka, professor of constitutional law at
Sarajevo University, agreed "A high price
has been paid for this deal," he said.
Others, however, felt Plavsic's turnabout was a genuine
act of contrition that would be a
massive boost for the war crimes process. "What Biljana
Plavsic did was a highly moral
and courageous act: to admit to oneself and others of
having being a part of a criminal
mechanism," said Mirsad Tokaca, an official with the
State Commission for Investigating
Crimes A member of the Bosnian Serb leadership
throughout the last decade, Plavsic
witnessed key decisions, making her potentially
important witness in other trials.
Plavsic, a former Sarajevo University Biology
professor, appeared on the Bosnian
political scene in the republic's first multi-party
election in November 1990. Two years
later, just as war broke out, she and other members of
the Serbian Democratic Party,
SDS, established the Bosnian Serb republic.
She was elected a member of the Bosnian Serb presidency
in May 1992 together with
two other SDS founders - the late Nikola Koljevic and
Radovan Karadzic, now the
leading Balkan fugitive. Plavsic left office in 1996
and a year later broke with the SDS,
claiming to have been disgusted by crime, corruption
and misuse of funds.
She received strong backing from both the West and
several smaller RS parties in RS,
creating a rift between hard-line rural eastern regions
and urban, more moderate western
areas. In 1997, she established her own party - the
Serb National Alliance - that became
part of a coalition, which wrested control of the RS
assembly from the SDS in
parliamentary elections later that year.
The tribunal prosecutor prepared war crimes charges
against Plavsic in April 2000,
initially keeping them secret, a device known as a
sealed indictment. Soon after it was
made public early last year, she became the first
senior Bosnian Serb official to
voluntarily surrender to The Hague. Plavsic first
pleaded not guilty to all counts and was
provisionally released September 6, 2001, after
Yugoslav government vouched for her
safe return to face trial. Amra Kebo is an editor at
the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje and
Gordana Katana is a Voice of America correspondent
based in Banja Luka.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
