The United Nations’s top court on Monday cleared Serbia of genocide during the war in Bosnia, but said Belgrade did breach international law by not acting to prevent the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica.
“The court finds that Serbia has not committed genocide,” Rosalyn Higgins, the president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), said.
The landmark ruling marks the first-ever judgement in a genocide case before the ICJ, the UN’s highest court set up to deal with disputes between states.
Bosnia, the plaintiff, had accused Serbia of masterminding the widespread “ethnic cleansing” during the brutal 1992 to 1995 war that left over 200Â 000 Bosnian Muslims and Croats dead.
The court judged there was only one act of genocide — the Srebrenica massacre — but found there was not enough evidence to suggest Belgrade was directly responsible for the killing of 8Â 000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian-Serb troops.
The Srebrenica massacre is the only event in the Bosnian war that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the UN’s ad-hoc war-crimes court, has ruled a genocide. The judges there have already handed down two individual genocide convictions against Bosnian-Serb officers who captured the UN enclave.
While the ICJ ruled that Belgrade had given “considerable military and financial support” to the Bosnian Serb leadership, the court found it neither gave instructions to carry out the Srebrenica massacre nor had control over the troops that did.
“All indications are to the contrary: that the decision to kill the adult male population of the Muslim community in Srebrenica was taken by some members of the main staff of the [Bosnian-Serb army], but without instructions from or effective control by [Serbia],” the court said.
However, under the 1948 genocide convention Belgrade was also obliged to do everything within its power to prevent genocide, especially because it did have influence over the Bosnian-Serb leadership.
The court ruled that although Serbia did violate international law because it did not try to prevent the killings, Belgrade would not have to pay financial compensation as Sarajevo had asked.
Instead, the ICJ called on Serbia to fully cooperate with the ICTY and deliver Bosnian-Serb general Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide over the Srebrenica massacre, to the war-crimes court, along with other suspects.
“The court finds … that the case is not one in which an order for payment of compensation … would be appropriate,” she said at the end of a summary of the judgement, which took a little under three hours to read.
In an initial reaction, Phon van der Biesen, a lawyer with the Bosnian team in The Hague, said the judgement was historic.
“This establishes what really happened in Bosnia; Belgrade cannot deny there was a genocide in Srebrenica,” he said.
Although the court rejected Serbian claims that it did not have jurisdiction to rule in the matter, the Serbian team called the final verdict “balanced”.
“Serbia is relieved and satisfied,” French lawyer Xavier de Roux of the Serbian ICJ team said.
“It’s a judgement that can bring peace. It is the end of a terrible fight — this should allow for the difficulties between the former Yugoslav states to be ironed out,” de Roux said. — AFP