Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Bosnia's victims, Muslim, Croat and Serb alike, plead that there can never be lasting peace in the Balkans if individuals who raped and pillaged and slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians are not brought to judgment. But the obstacles are formidable. Despite a recent show of cooperation from Croatia's Franjo Tudjman and Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, the two Presidents have largely stonewalled the tribunal. Both have deeply vested interests in preventing investigations and trials that could incriminate their political apparatus or themselves. Western powers sit down and do business with them because both men are needed to make...
...regular army, Second Posavina Brigade." I wasn't in charge, he says: One of the other men indicted was the local police chief, and "there's no way I could have commanded him." It wasn't me, he says: "Anyone could use my name, some Serb envious of me." I wasn't there, he says: on May 6 when he allegedly pulled the trigger on the detainees, "I think I was attending a funeral in Montenegro for one of my poor dead 18-year-old soldiers." The enemy committed war crimes, not us, he says, slamming down fuzzy, undated photos...
...been shot at twice, bashed with an iron bar and slammed with a shovel; he has been repeatedly arrested for petty crimes and is fighting a long prison sentence for extortion. He suspects everyone: Bosnians out for vengeance, NATO forces who he fears will deliver him to the Hague, Serb secret police determined to hush him up. "There are so many refugees, agents, spies," he says. "I'm just an easy target...
...there is evidence for much more serious charges against Seselj. When fighting broke out in 1992, he became one of the three key Serb paramilitary leaders who provided the shock troops of ethnic cleansing. He recruited and commanded a rabid band of "volunteers" dubbed the Chetniks in honor of Serbia's World War II royalist antifascist squads. Dressed in natty black jackets, the Chetniks left a well-documented trail of blood as they rampaged across Croatia and Bosnia, all the while bragging they were acting under Seselj's command. They exaggerate, he says. "I just happen to have...
...involved in any war crime," he says. "I provided volunteers. I made excursions to the front to boost morale. Those are not crimes." He waves away suggestions that he is responsible for fomenting the conflict. "Rhetoric is hardly enough to start a war." If there were Serb war crimes, he says, "scavengers" and "looters" among "criminal paramilitaries" did the deeds...