The New York Times

Monday, April 10, 2000

War Crimes Panel Picking Up Steam on Balkan Cases

By MARLISE SIMONS

THE HAGUE, April 9 -- Confounding the many critics who long called the international tribunal here a mere fig leaf for Western shame, the court dealing with Yugoslav war crimes has just completed an extraordinary month.

It has opened the first United Nations trial ever to focus exclusively on sexual violence against women, including gang rape and the use of women as sexual slaves as part of a war strategy.

It has begun the trial of one of the top generals accused of being responsible for the carnage in 1995 at the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, probably Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II.

And on Friday, prosecutors brought before the court a top Bosnian Serb political leader who is charged with complicity in the genocide that the prosecutors say his people perpetrated against Bosnia's Muslims and Croats, but who not so long ago was accepted as a figure who could meet with Western presidents and prime ministers.

While problems remain, and the recent momentum is the result of slow shifts by Western governments and tribunal prosecutors themselves, the changes have engendered a rare sense of excitement in the sober high-security building on the outskirts of this Dutch city where judges are quietly testing and defining uncharted international laws.

Usually the building feels more like a subdued hospital for the Balkan heart, a place that tries to put patches on the wrenching pain of witnesses while lawyers haggle over legal remedies.

But last week, which began with the capture of Momcilo Krajisnik (pronounced mohm-chee-loh cry-ish-nik), the senior Bosnian Serb politician who was brought before the court on Friday, seemed to galvanize staff members and visitors. He is the highest-ranking Serb in the tribunal's custody.

"The momentum and the energy at the tribunal have been amazing," said Heather Ryan of the Coalition for International Justice, who has monitored proceedings on behalf of several human rights groups for almost two years. "I've not seen so much substance at any one time, at least in the public arena. The tribunal seems to have hit a new stride."

For Mr. Krajisnik's first appearance, at which he pleaded not guilty to all nine counts against him, the usually empty public gallery overflowed and hundreds crowded the lobby to follow the event on television monitors.

Other courtrooms here heard testimony of great moment. United Nations peacekeepers gave the most vivid accounts yet of the tense days in July 1995 around Srebrenica that led up to the alleged massacre by Serbs of perhaps 8,000 Muslim men.

Two Dutch peacekeepers at the trial of Gen. Radislav Krstic, one of the Bosnian Serb commanders at Srebrenica, for the first time publicly testified that even before the peacekeepers' forced departure, there had been blatant signs of impending slaughter.

One of the Dutch soldiers, Paul Groenewegen, detained by the Serbs at the time, said he believed that executions had been going on, as he heard repeated single gunshots for a whole day, "perhaps 20 to 40 shots" per hour.

Andre Stoelinga, another Dutch soldier, said he had seen clothes and shoes piled by the roadside and a truck loaded with blue and bloated bodies. "It's a smell I won't forget," he told the court on Thursday.

Those accounts are significant because they differ widely from past tribunal testimony by the Dutch commander, Lt. Col. Ton Karremans, who said that while the peacekeepers had no choice but to hand over the civilians under their protection, they had no reason to suspect the coming executions of the Muslim men.

Such details have long been known inside the Dutch government, but their disclosure has shocked the Dutch public. Politicians and newspaper editorial writers have demanded a parliamentary inquiry.

The drama now going on at the the tribunal, with young women sobbing as they speak of gang rape and senior political and military war leaders standing in the dock, can also be followed by more people in the Balkans, for whom these trials are most intended.

The new South East News Service for Europe, financed mainly by the European Union, has begun to broadcast regular live television and radio programs and summaries from the trials, allowing people in Montenegro, Bosnia and parts of Serbia and Croatia to follow the tribunal's many activities.

Several factors have contributed to the tribunal's new momentum.

Western governments, which long appeared to pay only lip service to the court, lauding its objectives but starving it of funds and intelligence, now find it more politically convenient to have their soldiers arrest important suspects, like camp commanders and Bosnian Serb and Croat generals.

British troops were the first to do so, after the election of a Labor government in 1997 that succeeded the Conservatives who were in power during the 1991-95 wars in Croatia and Bosnia. American, Dutch and German soldiers followed.

Court investigators, whose work has often been painfully slow, have also managed to speed up indictments as the body of evidence has grown. A third courtroom, added in late 1998, has helped.

But it took public complaints from Louise Arbour, the former chief prosecutor, for NATO countries to release more intelligence reports and to use peacekeepers to seize key documents in Bosnia.

It appears that Carla Del Ponte, the former attorney general of Switzerland who took over as chief prosecutor last fall, has now pressed France into greater action.

French troops were seen as providing a de facto safe haven for key suspects in their sector of Bosnia, which covers much of the Bosnian Serb republic in the eastern part of the country.

Mrs. Del Ponte, who gained a record for toughness as a prosecutor fighting organized crime, called on the defense and foreign ministers in Paris in January. On Feb. 29, when President Jacques Chirac of France visited the tribunal, she handed him a piece of paper with the names of three Bosnian Serbs in the French sector whose indictments she had just signed days before.

Tribunal officials will not identify the two others, but the third, Mr. Krajisnik, was the right-hand man of the Bosnian Serb wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic, who was indicted by the tribunal in 1995.

Mr. Krajisnik was pulled out of bed by French troops a month after Mr. Chirac's visit to The Hague. By NATO standards, a month between indictment and arrest is a record time.

"Contrary to my predecessors, I've had no cooperation problems with France," Mrs. Del Ponte bluntly told Le Monde last week.

Insiders say it does not hurt either that the new tribunal president is French. Judge Claude Jorda took over from Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, an American, last fall.

Of course, the tribunal still faces obstacles. With 39 detainees in custody at special cells near The Hague, it now faces a bottleneck. The new government in Croatia, unlike that of the late President Franjo Tudjman, is eager to have indicted Croats face their day in court. It has already handed over a major war crimes suspect, Mladen Naletilic, after years of stalling by Mr. Tudjman.

There was some talk here last week about whether Mr. Krajisnik's arrest has sent Dr. Karadzic, the tribunal's most wanted political leader, across the border into Serbia, beyond the reach of NATO.

He is known not to be welcome in the circles of the Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic, his onetime patron. But the capture of Mr. Krajisnik, a close ally, has left Dr. Karadzic more isolated. He is said to move from place to place, accompanied by bodyguards, in the French sector of Bosnia.

Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military commander, who personally oversaw the capture of Srebrenica and like Dr. Karadzic has been indicted twice by the tribunal on charges of genocide, has long been in Belgrade. Twelve days ago he even appeared there at a match between the Yugoslav and Chinese soccer teams.

Some observers of the tribunal fear that the arrest of Mr. Krajisnik may have to be a surrogate for General Mladic and Dr. Karadzic, whose capture, if attempted, is likely to be far riskier.

Graham Blewitt, the tribunal's deputy prosecutor, said he was optimistic. "We see this new arrest as the precursor of the arrest of Karadzic," he said in an interview. "We want to believe that the French are going to comply with their promise, which is to detain the people who have been indicted in Bosnia."