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Bosnian Croat Convicted For War Crimes Against Muslims
THE HAGUE, Feb 26 (News Agencies) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal on Monday sentenced the vice president of the wartime Bosnian Croat republic to 25 years in prison for his role in a nearly three-year campaign to drive out Muslims from central Bosnia, making him the first politician to be convicted by the court.
Dario Kordic, 40, and co-accused Mario Cerkez, 41, a commander of the HVO Bosnian Croat militia, were both found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by a three-judge panel here.
Cerkez was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Kordic was convicted on 11 of 22 counts for his role in the massacres of hundreds of Bosnian Muslims in the central Lasva Valley from the start of the campaign of inciting ethnic hatred in November 1991 to March 1994.
He was the first politician to be convicted by the U.N. court; those prosecuted thus far have been charged with military responsibility for war crimes.
The judges of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued their verdict after one of the longest-running cases the court has heard, with 240 days of hearings and 500,000 pages of documents.
Presiding judge Richard May told Kordic: "You were the effective political commander in the area where the majority of the offences were committed."
Kordic "followed a plan conceived and executed by the Bosnian Croat leadership to ethnically cleanse the valley of Muslims," the British judge explained.
"The fact that you were a politician and took no part in the actual execution of the crimes makes no difference. You played your part as surely as the men who fired the guns," May said.
But he pointed out that Kordic was not "in the highest echelons" of the campaign of persecution, qualifying his role as that of a "planner and instigator" and thus rejecting prosecution calls for a life sentence.
Kordic, dressed in a dark suit and small round glasses, did not react as the judges read out the conviction and sentence against him.
"Given the nature of the crimes attributed to the accused, which are serious crimes, atrocious crimes, our first impression is that the sentences do not correspond to the crimes and responsibilities of the two accused," said Patrick Lopez-Terres, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.
Lopez-Terres said prosecutors would read the court's full decision before deciding whether to file an appeal.
Attorneys for Kordic and Cerkez said they too would read the judgment before making a decision. Both sides have 15 days to appeal.
Kordic and Cerkez turned themselves in to prosecutors on October 6, 1997, and their trial opened on April 12, 1999.
Born in Sarajevo, Kordic was a high-ranking member of the Bosnian Croat political and military establishment and became vice president of the self-declared Croat state within Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was never officially recognized and dissolved in 1995 under U.S. pressure.
By virtue of his position, Kordic knew of ,and actively participated in, the planning of systematic attacks on Bosnian Muslims, ICTY prosecutors argued.
He was indicted for individual criminal responsibility but also command responsibility - which carries a much heavier sentence.
He was accused of ordering attacks on Bosnian villages and territory to try to bring them under Croat control.
During these attacks, "at least 100 defenseless Bosnian Muslim civilians, including women, children, the elderly and the infirm were killed and many wounded or harmed in their homes or yards," the indictment said.
Cerkez, who became a commander of the HVO Croat militia brigade in Vitez, central Bosnia, in 1992, was under the command of Croat General Tihomir Blaskic, himself sentenced by the court to 45 years in prison last March.
The defense argued that the pair led "a desperate defensive battle for the survival of the Croat community in central Bosnia."
Before convicting Kordic, the U.N. tribunal had only considered cases involving military officials or those who carried out orders from superior officers during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.
Bosnian Serbs Momcilo Krajisnik and Biljana Plavsic, both close allies of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, are the highest officials held by the ICTY, but dates for their trials have not yet been set.
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