Sixteen years after being indicted for genocide, allegedly committed against the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic finally faced the first eye-witnesses of the massacre at his trial at the ICTY last week.

By Radosa Milutinovic in The Hague

The Bosnian Serb army, under Karadzic's command, executed more than 8,000 Bosnian muslim men and boys in the days following its occupation of the UN protected enclave in eastern Bosnia in 1995, according to the court’s indictment.

Yet given the magnitude of the crimes and the enormity of the Srebrenica tragedy, considered by the UN as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two, it was business as usual in Courtroom One: the former president questioned witnesses in his familiar polite and statesman-like style after prosecutors opened the Srebrenica phase of their case—their last--in a remarkably routine and low key manner.

Tightly-wrapped case

The first week of witness testimony seemed to signal that the prosecution case had been signed, sealed and delivered to Karadzic: after long years of investigation in the field and successful prosecutions in other Srebrenica cases before the Tribunal, prosecutors have a wealth of evidence and jurisprudence on their side.

The tables have turned for Karadzic, who for years had enjoyed the advantages of freedom despite being a fugitive, practising as a “healer” in Serbia, while many of his army officers and political allies were facing justice in The Hague. Since 1996, 12 of Karadzic's men have been convicted by the ICTY of crimes in Srebrenica in six trials. Among them were two army officers, Momir Nikolic and Dragan.

Obrenovic, pleaded guilty

Now that Karadzic has joined his former subordinates in The Hague, the playing field seems to have levelled between the accusers and the accused. Indeed, Karadzic complains constantly about being at a disadvantage as he confronts the prosecution team armed with its enormous body of evidence already admitted by the court.

Mladic rebuffs Karadzic

Karadzic, for example, sought to discredit a claim made by a witness, a mass-execution survivor, who said he saw general Ratko Mladic at one of Srebrenica's killing fields on July 14, 1995. Mladic was in Serbia at the time, meeting Slobodan Milosevic and international peace envoy Carl Bildt, Karadzic said.

But Karadzic was swiftly rebuffed by general Mladic himself, who in his war diary – as quoted by prosecutor Julian Nicholls – arranged the meeting near Belgrade for nine o'clock in the evening, which could have given him enough time to be at both places. Mladic's voluminous war diaries were seized by Serbian authorities during a search of his Belgrade apartment in December 2009.

So far, Karadzic – who called the large number of Srebrenica victims “a myth” in his opening statement in March 2010--has stopped short of completely denying the witness accounts. Nevertheless, he claimed that the 1,860 victims buried at the Memorial centre in Potocari were in fact Bosnian army soldiers; so far, he’s offered no evidence.

Witness accounts last week were also rather matter-of-fact and sober, stripped of emotion, probably because those in the dock have all testified many times before at this court. To speed up the Karadzic case, the Tribunal has admitted into evidence written testimonies from previous trials, although Karadzic gets the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses.

After an elderly villager described the execution-style killings of some 1,000 Muslim men and boys near the village of Orahovac, four Dutch soldiers, serving at the time in the enclave as UN “blue helmets,” told judges the story of their helplessness in protecting thousands of Srebrenica civilians in the face of general Mladic's war machine.

Mladic's “guarantees”

During their testimonies, Karadzic watched expressionless as prosecutors played the infamous footage of the meetings between General Mladic, the Dutch UN commander Thom Karremans, and the unwilling representatives of the Muslim population during the Srebrenica crisis, before the mass killings started.

In this devastatingly incriminating piece of evidence, Mladic repeatedly threatens the Muslim population with “a choice” - “to survive or disappear” - “disarmament” being a precondition for “survival.” In a chilling voice, Mladic also “guarantees life to every Muslim who lays down his weapon.”
The Dutch UN officers who attended those meetings – Johannes Rutten, Pieter Boering and Evert Ruve – testified that they, too, felt threatened by Mladic.

Total fear

They also gave similar accounts of the plight of thousands of Srebrenica men, women and children who had sought refuge at UNPROFOR's Dutch Battalion compound in the nearby village of Potocari.
“I saw total fear,” recalled Rutten, then second lieutenant, of “4,000-5,000 refugees” inside the Dutch base and “many more” outside.

In Rutten's words, Serb soldiers, on arriving at Potocari, separated Muslim men from their families, burned their belongings and ID cards and eventually took them all away by bus--men into the unknown, women and children to Muslim-controlled territory. Dutch soldiers who tried to follow the buses were “stopped at gun-point.”

Missing photographs

Rutten also spoke about the nine dead bodies found on July 13, 1995 by Dutch soldiers in Potocari. This discovery recently prompted a re-examination of Dutchbat’s controversial role in Srebrenica by the Netherlands’ national media. Rutten said he photographed “nine male bodies” and after returning home, dutifully left the film in the hands of Dutch army intelligence officers. They later informed him the photographs could not be developed “due to an error in the developing process.”

In another potentially embarrassing statement, Rutten suggested that some of his Dutch colleagues might have “assisted the deportation” of Srebrenica’s Muslims.

Prosecutors expect to call 60 more witnesses—from survivors, soldiers and scientists—by May, who will present their versions of the sequence of events that spawned the spectre of Srebrenica. Then Karadzic will take the floor to make his case for what happened during the war, beginning in Sarajevo and ending with what’s already been ruled genocide in Srebrenica.