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Agence France-Presse

When former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was convicted and sentenced to 40 years’ prison for masterminding the genocide of Muslims during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, the UN hailed it as an historic judgement.
But for the widows of Srebrenica massacre victims, Thursday’s ruling wasn’t enough.
“He killed so many children and will perhaps live long enough to regain freedom. Where he is is not really a prison. It is warm, he eats, he even looks good,” said Bida Smajlovic who lost her husband and brother in the atrocity.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic convicted of genocide
“My pain and my loneliness endure and nothing will change that, nothing can reduce my suffering,” she said.
The 63-year-old’s husband was one of three brothers who died in 1995 at Srebrenica, where Karadzic set about rounding up and killing every male resident.
Almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb forces in the massacre, the worst bloodshed on European soil since World War II.
On Thursday, their wives, including Bida, gathered nervously in Srebrenica around a television set to watch war crimes judges in The Hague sentence Karadzic, now 70, who will receive credit for time already spent in detention since 2008.
Another widow, Sajma Smajlovic, wept as she saw Karadzic on television.
“As soon as I see him it angers me,” she said, adding that she had taken tranquillisers to cope with the pain of the sentencing.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in jail after finding him guilty of 10 charges relating to Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, including genocide for the Srebrenica slaughter.
But Vasva Smajlovic, 73, said no sentence, however long, could compensate her for the loss of her husband Ismet.
“There is no adequate sentence for him, he will perhaps live long enough to be freed and has already lived for a long time, unlike my Ismet,” she said.
“The best sentence would be to kill him on the spot, for the world to see him decompose. The fact I have lived to see him condemned brings me some comfort,” she added.
In Belgrade after the sentencing, up to 5,000 ultranationalists briefly broke out in chants of “Radovan Karadzic!” during a pre-election rally against the government, which also took aim at the Hague-based tribunal.
“The verdict on Radovan Karadzic is a verdict on all Serb people, all of Serb history and the Serbian nation,” Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj told the crowds, some of whom let off firecrackers.
“He was sentenced while innocent... just because in a crucial historical moment he led Serbs in Bosnia,” said Seselj, who faces his own verdict from the court next week but is excused from attending for medical reasons.
In 1992 Karadzic founded the Republika Srpska (RS), a breakaway Bosnian Serb territory, and the conflict that ensued pitted his forces against the country’s Muslims and Croats.
The Dayton peace accord which ended the war in 1995 formalised Bosnia’s division into two semi-independent entities - the RS and a Muslim-Croat Federation.
Current RS leader, firebrand Milorad Dodik said it was “absolutely clear that today’s verdict... was made under strong pressure from various international lobbies”.
He said the ruling was in accordance with “stereotypes about Serbs’ exclusive guilt for the war in Bosnia”, Beta news agency reported.
But in Sarajevo, Bosnian Muslim political leader Bakir Izetbegovic described the conviction as the “most important verdict” since the Nuremberg trials for prominent Nazis.
Other victims of Karadzic’s aggression, while drawing some comfort from the ruling, seemed less satisfied.
“I was hoping for a life sentence,” said Adil Draganovic, 63, who was held captive in a Bosnian Serb concentration camp during the war and travelled to the Hague for the verdict.
“But then again 40 years is as good as a life sentence for him,” he said, while sporting a Bosnian flag around his neck.


For the widows of Srebrenica, 40 years is not enough for genocide mastermind Karadzic

Bida Smajlovic, 64, prays by her husband’s grave at a memorial centre for victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in Potocari, on Thursday. Photo: AFP

Bosnian Muslim women, survivors of July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, watch live broadcast of verdict reading for Radovan Karadzic on March 24, 2016 in Potocari. Karadzic, indicted by War Crimes Tribunal in Hague faces verdict as one of those responsible for the worst atrocities in Europe, after WWII. / AFP PHOTO / ELVIS BARUKCIC

epa05228965 Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic (R) sits in the courtroom for the reading of his verdict at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, The Netherlands.The former Bosnian-Serbs leader is indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Karadzic is considered the main responsible for the Srebrenica massacre. EPA/ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN

epa05229299 Victims pictures are displayed on a table as people watch the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia court verdict session for war-time Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic during his trial in The Hague, broadcated on TV in Sarajevo, Bosnia, 24 March 2016. Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison by the ICY on 24 March, after the judges found him guilty of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed and nine other war crimes charges. EPA/FEHIM DEMIR

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