By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

LONDON, England – A Bosnian Muslim and former member of the wartime presidency in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War was taken into custody at Heathrow Airport in London on March 1.

British police arrested Ejup Ganic after an extradition request was lodged by Serbia. That extradition warrant for Mr. Ganic, and eighteen others, was issued to Interpol in November. Serbia opened the case at the behest of Bosnian Serb wartime detainees, upset at the perceived inefficiency of Bosnia’s investigation.

The warrant indicts Mr. Ganic and eighteen other officials for war crimes related to the murder of forty soldiers in violation of the Geneva Convention. These alleged crimes relate to an attack in Sarajevo by Yugoslav forces in 1992, known as the Dobrovoljacka Street attack.

In particular, Serbia claims that the forty soldiers were killed, after Bosnia declared independence from Yugoslavia, when the soldiers were in the process of withdrawing from the country. The soldiers were all part of the Yugoslave People’s Army (JNA).

Mr. Ganic was the president of the Muslim-Croat Federation in Bosnia for two terms, including one during the Bosnian War. Serbia wants to question Mr. Ganic and determine any particular role he had in ordering or organizing the killings.

Serbia has forty-five days to provide documentation to the British courts to support its request for Mr. Ganic’s extradition. Serbian Justice Minister, Snezana Malovic, indicated that the Justice Ministry “is working hard to prepare necessary documents” and will have an extradition request prepared by week’s end.

At the same time, Bosnia is also claiming the right to have Mr. Ganic extradited to Bosnia for investigation and prosecution. Bosnia bases this claim on an extradition treaty it has with Serbia that says suspects wanted by both states will be tried in the country of residence.

A  Bosnian prosecutor insists that Bosnia “considers that dealing with war crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina by Bosnian citizens is under its exclusive authority.”

In the meantime, Mr. Ganic is next scheduled to appear in front of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in Britain on March 29.

For more information, please see:

REUTERS – Bosnia, Serbia seek war leader’s extradition from UK – 2 March 2010

BBC – Former Bosnian leader Ejup Ganic arrested at Heathrow – 1 March 2010

GUARDIAN – Former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic arrested at Heathrow – 1 March 2010

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic stated during his trial today that the Serb cause in the Bosnian war was “just and holy.” The statement was made as Karadzic began his defense today at his genocide trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.  He said:

“I will defend that nation of ours and their cause is just and holy…I stand here before you not to defend the mere mortal that I am, but to defend the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which for 500 years has had to suffer.” 

Karadzic, age sixty-four, led the Bosnian Serbs during the war in the 1990’s.  During his statement today he said that a core group of Muslims in Bosnia – then and now – wanted 100 percent power, at the expense of the Christian majority. He also said that the Serbs acted in self-defense after their peace plans were rejected. He accused former Croat leader Franjo Tudjman and former Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbecović of pursuing “ethnocentric” objectives, and stated that the two, respectively, desired to create Croatian and Muslim states.

He denied charges that the Serbs ran concentration camps where non-Serbs were tortured and killed, referring to them as “collection centers” for refugees. He said: “It was a transit point for persons who had nowhere to go because of the fighting going on around them.”

 The former Bosnian Serb leader is accused of masterminding the worst act of genocide since World War II.  In 1995 at Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave and U.N. safe zone, roughly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred during the course of a week. Karadzic is also accused of leading the bloody forty-four month siege of Sarajevo.

Prosecutors have charged Karadzic with orchestrating the campaign in order to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia in order to create an ethnically pure Serb state. Karadzic insists that that he is innocent of all eleven charges he faces, which include charges of genocide and war crimes. However, he has failed to enter a formal ‘not-guilty’ plea with the court.

For more information, please see:

Balkan Insight – Karadzic: Defence in the Name of the Serbian Nation – 1 March 2010

BBC – Karadzic calls Serb cause ‘holy’ – 1 March 2010

Eurasia Review – Bosnians React to Karadzic Opening Statements – 1 March 2010

The Guardian – Karadzic defends ‘just and holy Bosnian war – 1 March 2010

 

 

By David Sophrin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

MADRID, Spain – The leader of the Basuqe separatist group ETA, which has fought for decades to establish an autonomous state in northern Spain, was captured in France today.

Ibon Gogeascoechea, 54, was arrested in the French town of Cahan in Normandy in the culmination of a long-term law joint enforcement investigation by French and Spanish officials.  Gogeascoecha has been wanted for twelve years for the killing of a Spanish police officer.  Benat Aguinegalde and Gregorio Jimenez Morales, both wanted by Spanish authorities, were also arrested in Cahan.  The three men had been using falsified license plates and passport identification, with caused suspicion.  According to Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, the three men were planning “to enter Spain almost certainly with the worst of intentions.”

Gogeascoechea is the latest in a string of arrests of high-ranking ETA leaders.  His arrest marks the fifth ETA  leading official arrested since May 2008.  Thirty-two ETA suspects were arrested overall in the last year.  Gogeascoechea has also been wanted by Spanish police for his aid in the bombing of the Guggenheim museum in Biblio, Spain in 1997.

The ETA separatist movement has existed in northern Spain and southwestern France since the 1960s.  The bombing and targeted killings carried out by ETA since then have resulted in approximately 825 deaths.  The ultimate political objective of ETA is the establishment of an independent nation in that part of the Iberian peninsula.

These arrests are believed to have dealt a significant blow to ETA, which has been categorized as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the European Union.  Rubalcaba warned, however, against the public becoming complacent.  “This does not eliminate the risk of an attack.  ETA has the worst intentions, so we can’t lower our guard.”

For more information, please see:

AP – Spain says ETA chief arrested in France – 28 February 2010

CNN – Spain: Basque ETA chief arrested – 28 February 2010

DEUTSCHE WELLE – Spain says top ETA rebel leader captured in France – 28 February 2010

TELEGRAPH – ETA leader arrested in France – 28 February 2010

By Elizabeth A. Conger
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe Desk

ROME, Italy – On Saturday, tens of thousands of Italians gathered to demonstrate against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and his perceived attempts to evade prosecution. Legislation is currently being discussed in the Italian Parliament which would, in effect, prevent Berlusconi from going to trial. Protesters, accusing the Italian Prime Minister of seeking to undermine the legal system, marched through the streets carrying banners reading: “Enough, the law is the same for everyone.”

Berlusconi, on trial in two corruption cases, says that he is the victim of political persecution, and has recently compared the judiciary to the Taliban. On Friday, he said to a crowd in Turin: “If the prosecutors don’t like a law then they challenge it and it gets rejected by the courts…we are in the hands of this band of Taliban.”

The Italian National Association of Magistrates responded by condemning Berlusconi’s speech as “an intolerable escalation of insults and aggression.”

Angelo Bonelli, head of the Italian Green Party, said: “We are starved of legality…today, the real Taliban is Berlusconi who wants to tie the hands of the magistrates.”

Berlusconi, a former media tycoon, is currently on trial for allegedly paying British attorney David Mills $600,000 to provide false testimony during the 1990’s, and for alleged tax fraud. Mills was Berlusconi’s former tax attorney. On Thursday the Supreme Court in Rome ruled that even though Mills was found guilty last year of taking the bribe and sentenced to four and a half years in prison, the case should be dropped because it had timed out under the ten year statute of limitations.

On Saturday, a court in Milan adjourned Berlusconi’s trial until March 26. Berlusconi’s attorneys requested that the trial be suspended further until details on the Mills ruling were published. It is customary for Italian courts to delay publishing such judgements until two or three months after the cases are finished. The judges refused to delay further, saying: “the trial cannot be suspended for an undetermined amount of time.”

Italian law places a ten-year limit for prosecution of judiciary corruption crimes. The terms for Berlusconi’s trial are set to expire in early 2011.

For more information, please see:

AP – Berlusconi trial adjourned for a month – 27 February 2010

BBC – Silvio Berlusconi ‘avoiding justice’, demonstrators say – 27 February 2010

Telegraph – Court Insists Silvio Berlusconi’s bribery trial continue next month – 27 February 2010

BBC – Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi attacks ‘Taliban’ judiciary – 26 February 2010

By Kenneth F. Hunt
Impunity Watch Reporter, Europe

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The trial of a former Bosnian Serb General begins today, February 26, at the United Nation’s Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

Bosnian Serb General Zdravko Tolimir, who served as the assistant commander for intelligence and security of the Bosnian Serb Army, is alleged to have committed crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes. These charges stem from Mr. Tolimir’s role in the infamous 1995 Srebrenica massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian War.

Specifically, according to the indictment, Mr. Tolimir orchestrated multiple mass murders between July and November 1995. During the Srebrenica massacre, Mr. Tolimir allegedly supervised a military unit that “summarily executed more than 1,700 Muslim men and boys at the Branjevo Military Farm and the Pilica Cultural Center.”

Mr. Tolimir is one of the highest ranking war crimes suspects to be brought to trial to date. At the time of his arrest in May 2007, he was the third-most-wanted Bosnian war crimes perpetrator at large.

Mr. Tolimir, who is representing himself pro se, stood trial today in front of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ITCY). Prosecutor Nelson Thayer told ITCY judges in opening statements that Mr. Tolimir “[chose] to forsake his duty to abide by the rules of war in pursuit of a mono-ethnic Serb state”.

As a pro se litigant, Mr. Tolimir will be held to the standards of a professional lawyer, after Judge Christoph Flugge warned him during a pretrial conference in February. At the same time, Mr. Tolimir may not be able to call witnesses in his own defense however.

The ITCY has indicted 161 persons for war crimes coming from the former Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War. Mr. Tomlimir’s trial is one of 40 that are still being heard, while 121 have been completed. The ITCY will end its activities in 2014.

As a pro se litigant, Mr. Tolimir will be held to the standards of a professional lawyer, after Judge Christoph Flugge warned him during a pretrial conference in February. At the same time, Mr. Tolimir may not be able to call witnesses in his own defense however.

For more information, please see:

EXPATICA – Bosnian Serb general goes on trial for genocide – 26 February 2010

RADIO FREE EUROPE – Former Bosnian Serb General Goes On Trial – 26 February 2010

UPI – Trial starts for ex-Bosnian Serb general – 26 February 2010

WASHINGTON POST – Genocide case opens against Bosnian Serb general – 26 February 2010