Today: March 08, 2006 at 5:11:16 PST
U.N. Court Cuts Sentence of Bosnian Serb
By ARTHUR MAX
ASSOCIATED PRESS
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - A U.N. appeals court on Wednesday cut
seven years from the 27-year sentence of a Bosnian Serb army officer
convicted of being a key figure in the massacre of more than 8,000
Muslims in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.
Momir Nikolic, 51, who was a security and intelligence officer at
Srebrenica in July 1995, pleaded guilty in 2003 to one count of
persecution as part of a plea bargain. In exchange, prosecutors
dropped four other charges, including genocide.
The appeals court dismissed most of Nikolic's 12 grounds for appeal,
but faulted the lower court for three errors, including the failure to
give him enough credit for cooperating with U.N. prosecutors.
Nikolic was the first Serb officer to confess to his role in the mass
murder and to publicly tell the story of Srebrenica from the side of
the officers who oversaw Europe's worst civilian massacre since World
War II.
The war crimes tribunal, handing down a harsh sentence nearly three
years ago, cited the gravity of Nikolic's crimes against helpless
civilians. It also noted his commanding role in supervising the
transfer of civilians to places where they were executed and then
trying to cover up evidence of the crime.
Nikolic already has testified in the trial of his former commanders,
Vidoje Blagojevic, who was convicted of complicity in genocide, and
Dragan Jokic, convicted on lesser charges.
He could be an important prosecution witness if Ratko Mladic, the
fugitive commander of the Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica, is ever
brought to trial.
Mladic is one of the tribunal's most wanted men, and authorities in
Serbia are under intense pressure to arrest and surrender him to The
Hague. The EU council of ministers has set a March 31 deadline for
Belgrade to extradite him or face possible suspension of talks on
building closer ties with the 25-nation bloc.
The appellate judges also found the lower court had relied on a faulty
translation of a statement by Nikolic in which it understood him to
say that "only" 7,000 Muslims had been killed at Srebrenica.
In handing down its sentence, the lower court said it was shocked by
Nikolic's apparently dismissive attitude in describing the number of
deaths. But a corrected translation found that Nikolic had referred to
"around" 7,000 deaths.
Since then, the confirmed death toll of the massacre has risen to more
than 8,000.
The appeals verdict came three days after the suicide of Milan Babic,
the prosecutors' star witness in several other trials, drew attention
to the importance of insider witnesses like Nikolic.
Babic, a Croatian Serb convicted in 2004 of ethnic cleansing after
leading a brutal revolt, had already testified against former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic. He committed suicide in a U.N. prison
where he was serving a 13-year sentence.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
