WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL INDICTS TOP BOSNIAN SERBS

By Marlise Simons

(The Herald Tribune, 26 july 1995)

PARIS -The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Tuesday indicted the Bosnian Serbian leader, Radovan Karadzic, for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The tribunal also indicted the Bosnian Serbian Army commander, General Ratko Mladic, as a war criminal. The charges for both men include the persecution, shelling, killing and deportation of civilians throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina; the sniping campaign against civilians in Sarajevo, and the taking of United Nations peacekeepers as hostages and using them as human shields.

Mr. Karadzic and General Mladic are the highest officials to be formally charged as war criminals so far in the current war in the former Yugoslavia.

The court issued 24 indictments Tuesday. The others charged 21 Bosnian Serbian military officers and soldiers, and for Milan Martic, leader of the breakaway Croatian Serbs in the Krajina region. Mr. Martic was indicted for ordering attacks on three Croatian cities.

[The United Nations will continue to talk to all parties in the former Yugoslavia in search of peace, including those indicted for alleged war crimes, a UN spokesman said Tuesday, Reuters reported from New York.

["It's a dilemma, I think, that we've been thinking about for some time," a UN spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said. "When you are in a war situation you negotiate with all the parties in that field of operation."]

The tribunal was created by the UN Security Council in 1993 and has previously indicted 22 people for crimes committed in Bosnia, but only one of them is in custody. None of the people indicted Tuesday is in custody, according to a tribunal spokesman.

Officials at the court, which is based in The Hague, gave no indication of how they planned to bring those accused to trial.

Officials close to the court said there was little likelihood that a number of the accused would face trial because Serbia and the self-styled republic of the Bosnian Serbs have both refused to recognize the tribunal's jurisdiction and to hand over wanted suspects.

The court's decision, however, will make it difficult for Mr. Karadzic and General Mladic to travel outside friendly territory to attend peace talks, as they have in the past, since they would now risk arrest.

"All United Nations members have a legal obligation to cooperate with the tribunal and to implement its decisions," said Christian Chartier, the spokesman for the court. "That means they must act on the warrant for their arrest. Interpol has also been informed." But the indictments immediately raised questions as to what impact they could have on the fragile peace negotiations and even the day-to-day contacts between the UN Protection Forcein the war zone and Bosnian Serbian authorities.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday from the Hague:

The joint indictment of Mr. Karadzic and General Mladic said, in part:

"Beginning in July 1992 and continuing through to July 1995, Bosnian Serb military forces, under the direction and control of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, unlawfully fired on civilian gatherings that were of no military significance in order to kill, terrorize and demoralize the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilian population."

A separate indictment read: "Milan Martic is charged with war crimes in connections with the firing of cluster bombs into the central part of Zagreb on May 2 and 3, 1995."

The others indicted are charged with crimes committed in the Luka and Keraterm prison camps in Bosnia and the northern Bosnian region of Bosanski Samac.

Bosnian Muslims and Croats were interned in the Keraterm camp and Muslims in Luka. Bosanski Samac was the scene of a massive "ethnic cleansing" campaign against the Bosnian Croats and Muslim who lived in the community of about 33,000 in 1991.

Referring to Keraterm, an indictment summary said:

"On a regular basis, camp guards and others ... subjected the detainees to physical violence, constant humiliation, degradation, inhuman conditions and fear of death. Hundreds of detainees were killed."

According to the summary, one of the Luka commanders, Goran Jelisic, "referred to himself as the 'Serb Adolf' and said that he had come to Brcko to kill Muslims and often informed the Muslim detainees and others of the number of Muslims he had killed." Brcko is the northern Bosnian town were Luka was located.