Muslim Leader in Bosnia Asks to Reopen Genocide Case Against Serbia

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/europe/bosnia-serbia-genocide.html

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PARIS — The Muslim member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency on Thursday asked the highest United Nations court to reopen a 2007 case that cleared Serbia of genocide during the war in Bosnia.

The request by the Muslim member, Bakir Izetbegovic, is likely to fan the simmering political tension in a region still torn by the war that broke up Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Nationalists and pro-Serb secessionists in Bosnia, who have received support from both Serbia and Russia, could be emboldened by the move, critics said.

Moscow has been courting Serbia and Bosnian Serbs, while also covertly intervening in neighboring Macedonia and Montenegro, as it tries to regain its historical influence in the Balkans.

In 2007, the International Court of Justice ruled that while a massacre in the Bosnia city of Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces killed nearly 8,000 men and boys in 1995, was genocide, it did not find proof that Serbia was responsible for the killings.

But the court said that Serbia violated the Genocide Convention because it should have prevented the genocide and punished the military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic.

The request to review the case was filed Thursday at the court, which is based in The Hague and settles disputes between nations.

The brief argues that the court should review its findings because new evidence about Serbia’s wartime role has become available in numerous trials at another international court, according to Phon van den Biesen, the lead lawyer of the team.

Specifically, he said, in the trial of General Mladic, the evidence “in its entirety” offers the most complete view of the war, “because Mr. Mladic’s hands were on all important events in Bosnia.”

His trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ended in December, but a verdict is not expected until later this year.

Prosecutors in the Mladic case said they had included new details about Serbia’s secret strategy behind its brutal ethnic cleansing campaign to gain more land for Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia.

In 1992, at the height of that campaign, nearly 45,000 people were killed or declared missing, almost half of the 100,000 who died in the Bosnian war.

David Scheffer, an American former diplomat who is part of Bosnia’s legal team, said, “We are focusing on proving genocide for the attacks on six Bosnian municipalities in 1992.”

“In 2007,” Mr. Scheffer added, “the court decided it did not have sufficient evidence to find the specific intent to commit genocide, required for a genocide ruling. We believe we now have the evidence.”

Experts say there is only a slim chance that the court will reopen the case, but the request itself is likely to further inflame the debate in Bosnia.

The 1995 Dayton peace agreement set up two entities, a Bosnian-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serb republic, but relations, always strained, have worsened in recent months.

In November, the Bosnian Serbs held a controversial referendum – not envisioned under Dayton terms, but supported by Moscow — that could lead to full independence or even a new association with Serbia.

Milorad Dodik, the president of the Bosnian Serb ministate and a strident nationalist, said that the request to reopen the genocide case had “closed the door for Bosnia’s perspectives and switched the lights off.”

Mr. Dodik and others criticized Mr. Izetbegovic for trying to reopen the case without the consent of his Serb and Croat counterparts.

Serbia’s prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, said that by going back to court, Mr. Izetbegovic had pushed back relations by 25 years. “The little trust we built over the years is now gone,” he said.

In Sarajevo, supporters of Mr. Izetbegovic, including human rights groups, academics and opposition politicians, contended that the court needed to revisit the case because many people in Serbia and Bosnia still deny the magnitude of the killings or refuse to recognize even the massacres at Srebrenica as genocide, despite the rulings of international courts.

The request was apparently filed in haste. The 10-year window to ask for review of the case expires on Sunday.