Court: Serbia Failed to Prevent Genocide

(02-26) 11:47 PST THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) --

The United Nations' highest court on Monday exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that it failed to prevent the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.

The International Court of Justice said Serbia also failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the genocide after the Bosnian Serb army captured the U.N. enclave in July 1995, and ordered Serbia to hand over suspects for trial by a separate U.N. court.

It specifically demanded that Serbia hand over Gen. Ratko Mladic, the general who oversaw the Bosnian Serb onslaught at Srebrenica, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

It was the first time a state had been tried for genocide, outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust, although individuals have been convicted in genocide cases linked to massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda.

The Serbian leaders "should have made the best effort within their power to try and prevent the tragic events then taking shape," in the U.N. enclave, the scale of which "might have been surmised," the ruling said.

However, it rejected Bosnia's claim for monetary reparations.

Serbia has said it has been unable to arrest Mladic, although U.N. prosecutors say Mladic has evaded capture with the active help of the country's security forces. Similarly, NATO forces also have failed to find former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is believed hiding in the Serb sector of Bosnia. Both were indicted for genocide by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in 1995.

Key to the court's findings was its conclusion that no one in Serbia, or any official organ of the state, could be shown to have had the deliberate intention to "destroy in whole or in part" the Bosnian Muslim population — a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The judges found that Serbia, though it supported the Bosnian Serbs, fell short of having effective control over the Bosnian army and the paramilitary units that carried out the massacre. It also rejected Bosnia's argument that the accumulated pattern of atrocities during the war, fueled by Serb nationalism and driven by Serbian weapons and money, was tantamount to responsibility for genocide.

Unusually for such an important case, the judges were in accord, voting overwhelmingly in unison on the various points of the decision with only one or two dissenters.

By 13-2, the court found that Serbia had the power to foresee and prevent the Srebrenica slaughter — the worst in Europe since World War II — and failed to use it. Only the Serbian judge opposed the demand for Mladic's transfer.

Serbia "has not shown that it took any initiative to prevent what happened or any action on its part to avert the atrocities which were being committed," said the judgment.

Outside the Peace Palace, which houses the court, dozens of Bosnian Muslim demonstrators chanted, "Thieves. Corrupt judges."

Serbian President President Boris Tadic said his country was rightfully cleared of direct responsibility, but added that "the part of the judgment that said that Serbia did not do all in its power to prevent genocide against Bosniaks in Srebrenica is very hard."

In Bosnia, Fadila Efendic, whose son and husband were killed in Srebrenica, said, "I am speechless."

"We know that Serbia was directly involved. We saw Serbian troops shell us, sniper and kill our sons and husbands, we saw them commit genocide here," she said.

In Brussels, Friso Roscam Abbing, EU Commission spokesman, urged both sides to respect the judgment "to ensure justice and enable reconciliation to start." European Union has made Serbia's hopes for membership conditional on its cooperation in handing over Mladic and other fugitives.

Court president Judge Rosalyn Higgins said it had been clear in Belgrade there was a serious risk of slaughter in Srebrenica, where 7,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.

Serbia's claim that it was powerless to prevent the massacres "hardly tallies with their known influence" over the Bosnian Serb army, the ruling said. It did not specify what Serbia could have done.

Higgins said the tribunal relied heavily on the findings of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia, which has convicted two Bosnian Serb army officers on genocide-related charges for the deliberate slaughter in the U.N.-protected enclave.

"The acts committed at Srebrenica ... were committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina as such, and accordingly ... these were acts of genocide" committed by Bosnian Serb forces, the judgment said.

Despite the evidence of widespread killings, rape and torture elsewhere during the Bosnian war, especially in detention centers, the judges ruled that the criteria for genocide were met only in Srebrenica.

Then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic also was brought to trial on genocide charges, but he died in the U.N. jail in The Hague last March, just weeks before his four-year-long trial was due to end.