Stakic showed no emotion as the verdict was read

THE HAGUE, Aug 1 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Thursday, July 31, convicted a former Bosnian Serb doctor of war crimes and sentenced him to life in prison.

Milomir Stakic was convicted of the persecution, extermination and deportation of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in north-west Bosnia's notorious prison camps during the 1992-95 war, according to the BBC News Online service.

Stakic had faced three counts of genocide and five counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes in the camps, set up in the Prijedor region.

The international tribunal threw out the charge of genocide, the gravest of war crimes, against Stakic, 41, the ultimate boss of the infamous concentration camps of Prijedor.

Pictures of the emaciated victims at one of the camps alerted the world to the ethnic cleansing going on in the region after Bosnian Serbs overthrew the multi-ethnic authorities in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"The accused Milomir Stakic is guilty of extermination, murder, persecutions, deportation," Judge Wolfgang Schomburg said, before announcing the sentence of life in prison, the first handed down by the tribunal, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Stakic showed no emotion as the verdict was read.

Prosecutor Nicholas Koumjian, who requested a life term, said the sentence "reflects the gravity of the crimes. It sends a clear message. Those who plan these crimes will face consequences."

However, former Muslim detainees of Serb-run concentration camps slammed the court's decision to drop the genocide charges.

"As a (wartime) head of the municipal council and head of the crisis staff he should and could have been found guilty of genocide, because in my opinion in that position he was working on extermination of the Muslim people," said Mensur Islamovic of an association of former detainees in the area of Prijedor.

His view was echoed by Muharem Murselovic, a Muslim deputy in the Bosnian Serb parliament from Prijedor, who was detained six months in Omarska camp before being exchanged.

"I am satisfied with the verdict, but I regret that genocide was not proven. But regardless of that I believe that this verdict would help in a search for the truth and that it would open peoples' eyes so that this can never happen again," he said.

While it threw out the genocide charges, the tribunal found that "Doctor Stakic was one of the principal actors" in a campaign of murder, rape and torture, "and intentionally discriminated against non-Serbs."

But Judge Schomburg added: "Despite the comprehensive pattern of atrocities against non-Serbs in Prijedor, the trial chamber has not found this case to be a case of genocide, rather it is a case of persecution, deportation and extermination."

International human rights legal experts said that proving genocide is difficult, since the prosecution must produce documentary or other firm evidence to show that those accused acted with the intention of destroying all or part of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The prosecution is seeking to make a case of genocide against its number one accused, former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, citing in particular the events in Prijedor as an example of the Serb leader's policy of genocide.

The indictment against Stakic said he was part of a campaign in which the Bosnian Serbs subjected their ethnic Muslim and Croat neighbors to "violent, large-scale attacks."

"Many Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats who survived the attacks were allegedly arrested and transferred to detention facilities around Prijedor municipality established and operated under the direction of the crisis staff," the indictment said.

Only one person has been found guilty of genocide by the tribunal - the Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, who was sentenced to 46 years in prison for the Srebrenica massacre in which about 7,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in 1995.

The two men held responsible for the overall conduct of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, are still at large.

10 Years On, Bloodiest At Large

In 10 years of existence, the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has raised some hopes and dashed others.

It has brought a former head of state to trial and has convicted 38 others - including Stakic - for the brutal "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia.

The court has thus done away with the notion that the powerful can commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with impunity.

Of the sentences, 20 have been confirmed on appeal.

More than 30 other suspects are awaiting trial and a score are still at large, including the two men allegedly primarily responsible for the genocide, torture and deportation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Karadzic and Mladic.

They were both formally charged with genocide eight years ago, but NATO forces have been unable to apprehend them.

"The fact that both men are still at large is a disgrace," said Theodore Meron, the U.S. judge who presides over the tribunal.

"To be absolutely clear, the tribunal will not consider its work done until Karadzic and Mladic are brought to justice."

Without the court, which was set up in 1993 by the U.N. Security Council, most of the perpetrators might never have been troubled. But critics said it has failed to convey the idea that it cares for the victims.

The tribunal, and the one like it set up to judge war crimes in Rwanda, addresses itself more to experts in international law than to the victims and the survivors, according to the late Elizabeth Neuffer, a journalist who spent many years studying the work of the two courts.

The Hague tribunal's biggest catch has been Milosevic, who is accused of being ultimately responsible for the vast panorama of murders, rapes, deportations, torture, destruction and cruelty that followed the 1991 breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the country's descent into war.

Milosevic has been in the prisoners' dock since February 2002, facing 66 counts of genocide and war crimes for his role in the three major wars that tore Yugoslavia apart - Croatia from 1991 to 1995, Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and Kosovo from 1998 to 1999.

If the court seems remote from the needs of the victims of those wars, this is partly due to the fact that it is 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) removed from the scene, and partly because the proceedings, which are unfamiliar and in another language, are not always fully understood.

It took 30 months for the first judgment against Dusko Tadic to be translated into Serb and Croat.

Conscious of these shortcomings, the court launched an outreach program in 1999 to inform the survivors and more generally the population of the former Yugoslavia about its work.

U.N. member states contribute about 750,000 dollars for that program every year. The court has an annual budget of 100 million dollars.

The penalties are often considered too lenient by those who suffered rape, torture and deportation.

For example, the 11-year sentence against former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic was received with considerable bitterness, particularly in view of the fact that she had acknowledged her guilt in the "ethnic cleansing" that resulted in thousands of deaths.