Word: serbs
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...genocide conviction of the Serb general responsible for the Srebrenica atrocity in 1995 is cause for satisfaction, but not closure, because many of those who share culpability were not in the dock at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Those include not only the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs' murderous campaign but also the international community that assembled the victims on the promise of protection, and then stepped aside and allowed a five-day slaughter they had the means of stopping...
...Most Serbs knew the West had all but bribed the government into delivering Milosevic, but few cared. "He's a war criminal, so he belongs in the Hague," says Jelena Ivancevic, 23, a technology student in Belgrade. "And if we get some money on top for sending him there, that's even better." Part of Djindjic's strategy was to prime the public for Milosevic's transfer by releasing reports of police discoveries of mass graves within Serbia containing bodies of Kosovar civilians executed by Serb soldiers during the nato air war. Most shocking was the revelation that security forces...
Milosevic's swift transfer may have the perverse effect of forestalling a moral catharsis within Serb society. The Serbian government's dash to deliver its former leader in time to procure international aid has made the country's compliance with the war-crimes tribunal seem a matter of economic self-interest rather than collective responsibility. "The war-crimes issue has turned into a financial issue in this country," says Latinka Perovic, a Belgrade historian. "We have a moral duty to do away with the history of crimes, but I've heard precious little about these in recent weeks...
...prosecutor Del Ponte insisted that "the Serbian people are not on trial here. It is Slobodan Milosevic as an individual who will now face trial." But beginning with Milosevic's arraignment Tuesday, the sheer sensation of the trial will thrust many long-concealed crimes into the light and force Serbs to confront the scope of atrocities allegedly commanded by Milosevic but carried out by ordinary men and women, in their guises as soldiers and paramilitaries. The tribunal's original indictment against Milosevic, issued in 1999, deals with the atrocities committed by Serb and Yugoslav army forces in Kosovo and holds...
...Ponte has already expanded the indictment against Milosevic to cover some 300 newly confirmed Kosovar victims, and expects to add further charges to account for the Serb police's recent discoveries of mass graves. She has also signaled her intention to indict Milosevic for war crimes perpetrated during the earlier wars in Bosnia and Croatia. A trial on those charges would be explosive - it could, for instance, reveal what Belgrade knew about the massacre of at least 7,000 Bosnians in Srebrenica in 1995 - but would also present a more slippery case. Although many observers have suspected that Milosevic...