Eric Gordy: Serbia’s Mixed Messages
[Eric Gordy is senior lecturer at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of University College, London.]
A number of events in March-April 2010 might seem to provide confirming evidence to anyone inclined to think that the Bosnian war, ended or suspended by the Dayton peace accord in 1995, was still underway.
The most striking took place on 1 March, when Bosnian vice-president Ejup Ganic was arrested on an international warrant while preparing to board a flight at London’s Heathrow airport. The charge: that while he was filling in for the abducted Alija Izetbegovic in 1992, he had ordered Bosnian troops to fire on a withdrawing column of Yugoslav People's Army soldiers. The troops were being given passage out of their surrounded barracks in exchange for the release of Izetbegovic and his party.
The incident for which the warrant was written is an unclear one. In those first days of the war there was hardly a Bosnian army to speak of, much less a chain of command. Territorial defence had been organised by an impromptu coalition of police and thieves whose leading members were often at pains to show the government just who was subordinate to whom. It was unclear just what was being carried in the convoy that was fired upon: withdrawing soldiers, or soldiers being used by their commanding officers as shields for the weapons and equipment that was withdrawing with them? And while it is clear that there was a crime, estimates of the number of victims has ranged widely - from the four to five asserted by Bosnian general Jovan Divjak to the forty-two claimed by the Serbian government.
A magistrate-court hearing in London on 13 April 2010 resulted in a ruling that Serbia’s appeal for the extradition of Ejup Ganic could continue to be heard, and a further hearing was scheduled for 20 April.
But why should this incident from 1992 be the subject of an extended international court case in the United Kingdom in 2010? After all, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) considered the case it determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge or not, and asked Bosnian prosecutors to conduct an investigation. While waiting for the Bosnian prosecutors to start, Serbian prosecutors began their own inquiry.
The first investigation has yet to begin and the second is not completed, but somehow a warrant was issued and voila! – Ejup Ganic was placed under house-arrest in Battersea, south London (at least until a benefactor posted bail for him after ten days), and the same names who became known for advocating one side or another in 1992-95 return to the fray as the years fall away.
That is to say: people who were responsible for the investigation did not do their jobs, and as a result wounds that could have been closed were scratched open for a new generation. Progress made through negotiation between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – on issues including jurisdiction for the prosecution of war crimes – has been undone by the emergence of a clear opportunity for short-term publicity....
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A number of events in March-April 2010 might seem to provide confirming evidence to anyone inclined to think that the Bosnian war, ended or suspended by the Dayton peace accord in 1995, was still underway.
The most striking took place on 1 March, when Bosnian vice-president Ejup Ganic was arrested on an international warrant while preparing to board a flight at London’s Heathrow airport. The charge: that while he was filling in for the abducted Alija Izetbegovic in 1992, he had ordered Bosnian troops to fire on a withdrawing column of Yugoslav People's Army soldiers. The troops were being given passage out of their surrounded barracks in exchange for the release of Izetbegovic and his party.
The incident for which the warrant was written is an unclear one. In those first days of the war there was hardly a Bosnian army to speak of, much less a chain of command. Territorial defence had been organised by an impromptu coalition of police and thieves whose leading members were often at pains to show the government just who was subordinate to whom. It was unclear just what was being carried in the convoy that was fired upon: withdrawing soldiers, or soldiers being used by their commanding officers as shields for the weapons and equipment that was withdrawing with them? And while it is clear that there was a crime, estimates of the number of victims has ranged widely - from the four to five asserted by Bosnian general Jovan Divjak to the forty-two claimed by the Serbian government.
A magistrate-court hearing in London on 13 April 2010 resulted in a ruling that Serbia’s appeal for the extradition of Ejup Ganic could continue to be heard, and a further hearing was scheduled for 20 April.
But why should this incident from 1992 be the subject of an extended international court case in the United Kingdom in 2010? After all, when the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) considered the case it determined that there was insufficient evidence to charge or not, and asked Bosnian prosecutors to conduct an investigation. While waiting for the Bosnian prosecutors to start, Serbian prosecutors began their own inquiry.
The first investigation has yet to begin and the second is not completed, but somehow a warrant was issued and voila! – Ejup Ganic was placed under house-arrest in Battersea, south London (at least until a benefactor posted bail for him after ten days), and the same names who became known for advocating one side or another in 1992-95 return to the fray as the years fall away.
That is to say: people who were responsible for the investigation did not do their jobs, and as a result wounds that could have been closed were scratched open for a new generation. Progress made through negotiation between Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – on issues including jurisdiction for the prosecution of war crimes – has been undone by the emergence of a clear opportunity for short-term publicity....