Yugoslav war crimes prosecutor hails survivors, urges reconciliation

THE HAGUE: The UN's top prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia on Monday hailed survivors of the Balkan wars, paying tribute to their courage, and urging all sides to work for reconciliation in the divided region.
"The true heroes, the only heroes are in fact those ... survivors who came to the tribunal," chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told AFP in an interview.
"Those who survived in a mass grave for hours and who years later came to tell their story and face the perpetrators. Those are the true heroes of the conflict," he said.
Speaking two days before a landmark verdict in the case of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, Brammertz said his team of war crimes prosecutors had been often inspired by the courage of the victims and survivors and their determination to face perpetrators to seek justice in The Hague far from their homes.
"They really gave my team and myself the energy to do the job, because they remind us every time, again and again, why this tribunal has been set up," he said.
Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Wednesday hand down a long-awaited verdict against Mladic, 74, blamed for steering Europe's worst atrocities since World War II.
Called the "Butcher of Bosnia", Mladic has denied 11 counts, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed during the country's brutal 1992-95 war, when 100,000 people died and some 2.2 million were left homeless.
Mastermind
The judgement in the Mladic case "is one of the most important in the history of the tribunal", Brammertz said.
"He was the mastermind behind the killing of thousands of people," and together with his political accomplice, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic they were "the architects of the policy of ethnic cleansing in the municipalities".
Karadzic was handed a 40-year sentence last year for genocide and other war crimes, which he is now appealing.
The Mladic trial is the last before the Yugoslav war crimes court, which will close its doors at the end of the year, after next week also handing down a verdict in the appeals of former Bosnian Croat leader Jadranko Prlic and five cohorts.
"Closing the tribunal without Karadzic and Mladic arrested and prosecuted would have remained forever a very dark chapter in the history of the tribunal," said Brammertz.
"So the arrest of the two has been extremely important because this is what victims' organisations were expecting," he said.
He said he hoped a three-judge bench would sentence Mladic to life behind bars, adding "nothing less would be acceptable".
"Based on the evidence we have presented, based on the high level of (Mladic's) responsibility, I'm expecting the highest sentence," the prosecutor said.
"We are confident that he will get the judgement he deserves."
No vision for future
He dismissed criticisms by some in the region that the tribunal had only prolonged tensions and insisted his office had "no political agenda".
"What is much more the case is that nationalist politicians in the region are trying to use ... the decisions by the ICTY to push their own nationalistic agenda," he said.
The prosecutor, who often travels to the Balkans region, also warned about rising nationalism and "politicians who are glorifying war criminals today", saying he believed the "situation went backwards over the last few years."
"I would have hoped that there is an acceptance of wrongdoing, that there would be a joint acceptance of the past, well this is today not happening," Brammertz said.
"I strongly believe, that if you cannot agree on the past how can you build a future together? How can you have a vision for the future for different communities, if you do not accept the wrong-doings of the past."
His hope remained now that "a new generation of persons from the former Yugoslavia will have much more critical understanding about the past in order to move forward together." — AFP