The Washington Post

Thursday, January 11, 2001

Bosnian Serb Ex-President Charged With War Crimes

By R. Jeffrey Smith

ROME, Jan. 10 -- A U.N. prosecutor today publicly accused former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic of planning, ordering and overseeing the killings of thousands of ethnic Croat and Muslim civilians in Bosnia at the outset of the former Yugoslav republic's brutal civil war in 1992.

Plavsic presented herself at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague today. A lawyer, Krstin Simic, who accompanied her on a flight to The Hague from the Bosnian Serb capital of Banja Luka, told reporters that Plavsic would deny the charges and had surrendered so that she could have a forum to defend herself.

In an indictment signed last April and kept secret until its public disclosure today, prosecutor Graham Blewitt charged Plavsic, a postwar ally of the United States, with genocide, crimes against humanity, "extermination, murder, and willful killing." She allegedly committed these crimes while holding the post of co-president and other senior positions in the breakaway entity in Bosnia known as the Serb Republic.

In the 13-page indictment, Plavsic and two other Bosnian Serb leaders -- Radovan Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik, who were previously indicted -- are accused of organizing the mass executions of more than 900 civilians in at least 18 incidents between April and November of 1992. She is also blamed for forcing thousands of ethnic Croats and Muslims into 20 detention camps where some were summarily executed and others were raped or tortured to death.

The indictment states that she helped orchestrate the deportations of non-Serbs, a crime against humanity under the tribunal's statutes. Plavsic "knew or had reason to know that Bosnian Serb forces were committing the acts described," the indictment states, but instead of blocking such acts, she "publicly condoned and congratulated the forces" that conducted such crimes.

Plavsic, 70, was a key figure in the Bosnian Serb leadership from 1990 to 1998; after the Dayton accords ended the civil war in 1995 and gave international legitimacy to the Serb Republic, she became its president.

She won Western support for her reelection to that post after breaking with Karadzic and Krajisnik in 1997 and promising to allow ethnic Croats and Muslims who were allegedly expelled on her orders to return to their homes.

But she never kept the promise, which was politically unpopular. After campaigning with strong support from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright in 1998, she was defeated at the polls by another Bosnian Serb nationalist who overtly opposed any return by non-Serbs.

The current Bosnian Serb government hopes that Plavsic will be free on bail pending any trial. Western officials say that she surrendered to the tribunal after being threatened with arrest by NATO peacekeeping troops.