Translated material
Convicted and released
The Hague Tribunal took pity on the Bosnian “hero”
Yesterday, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica called the Hague Tribunal's verdict against former Bosnian Muslim commander Nasser Oric "an open mockery of justice and an outrage against innocent victims." Serbian President Boris Tadic compared the verdict to that of a petty shoplifter.Naser Oric, 39, was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday, although the prosecution had hoped to put him behind bars for 18 years. Since he had been in a holding cell for more than three years, the prisoner returned to Sarajevo the next day. Hundreds of young Bosnians wearing T-shirts with his portrait and the slogan “Long live the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina!” Oric was greeted at the airport with flowers and applause as a national hero. His lawyers announced their intention to appeal the verdict of the Hague Tribunal and achieve a full acquittal of the client.
The charges brought against Oric in March 2003 related to events that took place in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in 1992-1993. According to Serbian data, Naser Oric's militants were involved in the murders of more than 3 thousand Serbs and the destruction of more than 130 Serbian villages. During the investigation of the case at the Hague Tribunal, the names of only six Serbs who were tortured to death in the police station and in other detention centers in the city of Srebrenica were established. Numerous cases of destruction of Serbian villages in the municipalities of Bratunac and Srebrenica have also been revealed.
During the hearings, 80 witnesses were questioned and almost 1,640 exhibits were examined. However, the judges found it proven only that the accused failed to “take necessary and responsible measures to prevent his subordinates from committing murders” and other crimes.
In 1985-1986, Oric served in the special radiation and chemical protection unit of the Yugoslav People's Army, where he rose to the rank of corporal. After that, he joined the police, where he quickly became part of the Serbian elite special forces. In 1990-1991, he was entrusted with maintaining order in Kosovo, where Albanian separatists were already protesting. After Bosnia declared independence in the spring of 1992, Oric headed one of the army units of the newborn state.
Serbia claims that the anti-Serbian terror of troops under the command of Oric in Bosnia and Herzegovina was the immediate reason for the capture of the city in the summer of 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces under the command of General Ratko Mladic. After this, about 8 thousand Bosnian Muslims were killed in Srebrenica under circumstances that were not fully clarified. Negotiations on Serbia's accession to the EU are now frozen by the West due to the fact that Belgrade is not able to extradite Ratko Mladic to The Hague for trial.
The surprisingly lenient verdict in the Nasser Oric case gave a new argument to critics of the Hague Tribunal. The statistics of the charges brought against him show a certain "partiality" towards one of the parties to the bloody conflict that engulfed the Balkans in the 1990s - more than 80 Serbs, less than 30 Croats, about 10 Bosnian Muslims and only four Kosovo Albanians. With each such verdict, the Hague Tribunal once again proves that it is “an institution of the past, outdated, biased and plagued by corruption,” says the famous Serbian political scientist, author of the book “The West or Russia”, published in 2004, Dejan Mirovich. In a conversation with Vremya Novostey, he emphasized that “The Hague Tribunal must cease its activities in the same way as the American prison at Guantanamo Bay or the CIA’s “secret prisons” around the world.” “All these illegal prisons are on the same page; they are generated by the global policy of one great power,” the expert is sure.