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