Bosnia: UN tribunal sentences former Muslim commander to three years
The Hague, 15 Sept. (AKI) – Former Bosnian Muslim Army commander Rasim Delic was sentenced on Monday by the UN's Hague-based Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to three years in jail for crimes against Serb prisoners.
Delic was held responsible for crimes committed by mujahadeen fighters from Islamic countries that fought under his command to help local Muslims in Bosnia’s bloody 1992-1995 civil war.
Delic was the head of the general staff of the Bosnian Army from 1993 to 1995 and was charged with chain of responsibility command.
During that period the “El Mujaheed” unit committed several crimes, killing over 70 Serb and Croatian prisoners of war.
Some of the prisoners were beheaded and their heads were shown to other prisoners.
But the court ruled Delic couldn’t have known about the murders and therefore could not have prevented them.
Delic surrendered to the tribunal in 2005 and pleaded not guilty. He was later released pending trial but has served 445 days in detention which will be deducted from his jail term.
The verdict was likely to steer another storm of protests from Bosnian Serbs and Croats, who claim the Hague tribunal is a political court. The tribunal freed earlier this year two other Muslim commanders, Naser Oric and Sefer Halilovic for lack of evidence.
The president of the Bosnian Serb association of war prisoners, Nedeljko Mitrovic, said the verdict was proof that the tribunal is a biased court which doesn’t work from the evidence before it, but favours Muslims.
Another Bosnian Serb official, Branislav Dukic, said Serb victims of the war were treated by the tribunal as mere “collateral damage.”
Since it was founded by the United Nations Security Council in 1993, the tribunal has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for crimes committed during the 1990s Balkan wars.
Close to sixty people have been sentenced so far to over one thousand years in jail.