Bosnian lawsuit gets under way at The Hague By Marlise Simons The New York Times
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006 The International Court of Justice began hearings Monday in its first genocide case, a lawsuit in which Bosnia charges that Serbia tried to destroy Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslim population. The stakes, as framed by Bosnia, are to gain the formal recognition of the brutal fate of its people and to obtain yet undefined payment of compensation for the nation and its war victims. The legal base for the suit is the assertion that Serbia violated the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide "on all counts" during the wars of the 1990s that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia. While other national and international courts have tried individuals for the crime of genocide, the International Court of Justice has never had to tackle the complex issue of one state accusing another of genocide. The United Nations court, which in its current form has existed since 1946 and is based at the Peace Palace in The Hague, adjudicates disputes between nations and more commonly deals with territorial or maritime claims. The public hearings now under way are the final stage in a 13-year old process. Since Bosnia filed its suit in 1993, both sides have exchanged voluminous legal briefs and Serbia has tried to settle the dispute both through diplomacy and through attempts to block the court from taking it on. But the court ruled that it had jurisdiction, allowing the case to proceed. Public hearings are scheduled to go on until May 9, after which it will probably take months before the international judges will deliver a verdict. In his opening statement, Sakib Softic, the Bosnian representative, said that the violence instigated by Belgrade in 1992 "destroyed the character of Bosnia and Herzegovina and certainly destroyed a substantial part of its non- Serb population." He said the Belgrade authorities had taken the Bosnian population "on a path to hell, a path littered with dead bodies, broken families lost youths and lost futures." Despite the magnitude of the massacres, he said, the denial of war crimes was still rife in Serbia. The case aims to do away with "the falsifying of history," Softic said. An estimated 100,000 people died on all three sides in the war from 1992 to 1995, but most were Bosnian Muslims. The lawsuit cites numerous cases of the deliberate killing of Muslim civilians in their homes, in their towns and in concentration camps and documents large-scale rape and torture and the destruction of mosques and cultural heritage sites. Phon van den Biesen, a lawyer on the Bosnian team, said in an earlier interview that Bosnia was using only evidence available in the public realm. "We have not tried to get materials from intelligence services," he said. "We have found more than enough material." He said the evidence will include rulings from a different court, the United Nations war crimes tribunal dealing with the former Yugoslavia. The tribunal, also in The Hague, has already ruled that genocide took place in 1995 at Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia, when 8,000 unarmed men and boys were systematically executed and thrown into mass graves. The tribunal has convicted several Bosnian Serb military officers for genocide and is trying former President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia on genocide charges. While the enormous volumes of evidence from this tribunal may well be essential, the case at the Peace Palace has over the years affected the tribunal's work. Tribunal officials have said that the office of Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, has at times been unable to obtain documents from Serbian archives because Belgrade feared they could be used against them in the suit. Some lawyers at the court have suggested that the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader, who is charged with genocide, may also have been delayed because of the suit. Mladic's links with the Serb military are well documented. He has always received his salary, as well as his pension, from the Defense Ministry in Belgrade. During the 1992 to 1995 war, Belgrade provided covert support to Mladic's purportedly separate army. The start of the case against Mladic could therefore also strengthen the Bosnian lawsuit against Serbia, some lawyers said. The suit is complex for a number of reasons, not least because Bosnia has changed legally since the suit was filed in 1993. It consists today of three constituent peoples of which only one group, the Bosnian Muslims, are backing the case. The Bosnian Serbs, who are now part of the government, are opposed and have criticized what they call a divisive move that has cost millions of dollars in legal fees. The Bosnian Croats appear largely indifferent to the case. But the Bosnian Muslims have insisted repeatedly that they want greater recognition for their suffering during the war. Lycos iQ - show what you knoW: iq.lycos.co.uk [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] =============== Group Moderator: [EMAIL PROTECTED] page at http://magazine.sorabia.net for more informations about current situation in Serbia http://www.sorabia.net Slusajte GLAS SORABIJE nas talk internet-radio (Serbian Only) http://radio.sorabia.net Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
