War Crimes Court Gets a Briefing on Conflict in Bosnia
Three judges who will decide whether Dusan Tadic is a sadistic monster or a victim of mistaken identity spent Wednesday learning the historical backdrop to his alleged atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Throughout the day, prosecutor Grant Niemann stood behind a lectern like a schoolmaster, questioning Balkans specialist James Gow of London University on the ethnic tensions that tore apart the former Yugoslav federation in 1991.
The judges, with former U.S. federal Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald presiding, watched snatches of a video, saw documents chronicling the breakup and studied graphs displaying the ethnic makeup of the Yugoslav national army accused of aiding the Bosnian Serb forces.
“It is to give the judges a background by piecing together the historical, political and ethnic roots of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia,” tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier said on the second day of the tribunal’s opening trial.
Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, is accused of murdering more than 30 Muslims and Croats and torturing dozens of others in Bosnia’s northwestern Prijedor region in 1992. He has pleaded innocent, claiming he is a victim of mistaken identity.
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