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ICTY Sentence Mockery for Srebrenica Victims: Croatian Daily
ZAGREB, Aug 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.N. war crimes tribunal's decision to sentence Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic to 46 years in prison for genocide made a mockery of the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, a Croatian daily said Friday.
"All the evidence ... points to the worst mass crime…but it obviously was not enough for a sentence that would at least give moral satisfaction to the Srebrenica victims," Vecernji list said in a commentary, the French News Agency AFP reported.
Krstic was convicted Thursday on genocide charges for his role in the 1995 massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the U.N.-protected enclave of Srebrenica.
"Is The Hague tribunal making a mockery of the victims of Srebrenica?" asked the Croatian paper. "For every person in Srebrenica he ordered to be killed, Krstic got two days of prison."
The Croatian paper compared the verdict with the case of Stevan Todorovic, a Bosnian Serb police chief sentenced to 10 years, although he admitted he had participated in the persecution of non-Serbs, including cruel and inhumane treatment, murder, sexual violence, physical torture and deportations.
"There is no doubt that the tribunal judged that he [Todorovic] was a 'good criminal' and that thus he was pardoned for rapes and killings," the paper said.
According to Vecernji list, the sentence proved that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) "does not have a well-balanced criteria for those who are standing accused," and that the verdict was a "very clear indication that this tribunal is not only a judicial institution," AFP reported.
The ICTY verdict marked the first time the tribunal has convicted anyone of genocide - defined by the tribunal's statutes as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" - for atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia.
Prosecutors described the Srebrenica massacre as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, and the 53-year-old Krstic had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
"In July 1995, General Krstic, you personally agreed to evil," Judge Almiro Rodrigues said.
"You are guilty of the murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims... You are guilty, General Krstic, of genocide.
"This is why the trial chamber convicts you today and sentences you to 46 years in prison."
The Srebrenica enclave - a so-called U.N. safe haven - was overrun on July 11, 1995, by Bosnian Serbs, who then rounded up Muslim men of fighting age, loaded them into trucks, transported them to remote locations and summarily executed them.
Some 7,475 Muslim men were reported missing, and were presumed killed in the attack and ensuing massacres, according to figures from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Krstic, who is married with one daughter, was deputy commander of the Drina Corps, which led the assault.
Rodrigues found Krstic guilty of "having agreed to a plan for the mass execution of all [Muslim] men of fighting age" in Srebrenica.
He also found the general guilty of causing the "incredible suffering of Bosnian Muslims" by forcibly transferring from the enclave thousands of women, children and old people.
Rodrigues also found Krstic guilty of murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The court saw pictures of unearthed corpses with blindfolds still in place and hands bound, some of over 2,000 corpses so far exhumed by ICTY investigators in the Srebrenica area.
In his summary judgment, Rodrigues spoke of the living horror of Srebrenica - "a name for a post-traumatic syndrome" that demands continued vigilance in seeking justice for the crimes committed there.
He referred to the survivors as "thousands of amputated lives six years later, robbed of the affection and love of their kin now reduced to ghosts who return to haunt them day after day, night after night."
Rodrigues vividly described the images that the name "Srebrenica" evokes - "women, children and old people forced to climb into buses leaving for destinations unknown… men who would be found - but not always - dead, corpses piled up in mass graves; corpses with their hands tied or their eyes blind-folded - frequently; dismembered corpses as well; unidentified corpses… corpses."
Bodies of victims are still being recovered to this day. A mass grave containing more than 200 bodies of Muslims believed killed after Srebrenica fell was unearthed last month in eastern Bosnia.
ITN News said that although the sentence was the longest delivered yet by the tribunal in its Balkan war convictions, it still fell short of the eight consecutive life sentences that the prosecution had demanded.
A group of Muslim widows, who gathered at the office of the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa Enclaves in Sarajevo to watch coverage of the judgment from the court in The Hague, Netherlands, expressed deep disappointment at the ICTY verdict, CNN's online service reported.
Zumra Sehomerovic, whose husband was taken away before her eyes and killed, said: "Today, among the mothers with wounded souls, I do not see even a bit of satisfaction at the length of his sentence."
"This punishment is a reward in my opinion; he should have been given life imprisonment," said Munira Subasic who lost 25 male relatives in the Srebrencia massacre.
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