Acquittal of Serbia shocks war victims

Bosnians who survived the Srebrenica massacre react during a live TV broadcast from the World Court decision in The Hague, in the village of Podlugovi near Sarajevo on Monday. The UN's highest court exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for the mass slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnia war, but ruled that it failed to prevent genocide. PHOTO: AP

The ruling in The Hague on Monday that Serbia had failed to prevent genocide in Bosnia greatly disappointed relatives of the mainly Muslim victims of the conflict.

For them, as well as members of the Bosnian government who are not Serb, the verdict marked the second setback in a year, as they worked to pin on the Serbian government and its security forces the ultimate responsibility for fueling plans by nationalists to seize most of Bosnia and integrate it into a Greater Serbia.

The first setback came in March last year, at the death of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's former president, just weeks before the trial's expected conclusion.

His death forestalled a decision on whether Milosevic was guilty of committing war crimes and possibly genocide. The Milosevic trial pointed to the substantial involvement of the Serbian state in helping to finance, equip and plan the war in Bosnia.

Monday's ruling at the International Court of Justice found a clear link between Serbia and the Bosnian Serb military. According to the court, Serbia had been in a position to stop the genocide of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, an enclave supposedly guarded by the UN in eastern Bosnia.

But since the court stopped short of finding the state responsible for that genocide, it gave Serbian politicians the chance to claim some kind of victory.

Serbian Minister Vojislav Kostunica, said the court "acquitted Serbia of a serious charge that it had committed genocide."

Still, he said it was necessary to investigate war crimes to allow for reconciliation.

Krstan Simic, a senior politician in Bosnia's Serb republic, the entity carved out by Serbian nationalists in the war, also welcomed the decision.

"I'm pleased to say that arguments show that the judges of the International Court of Justice were taking into account real facts," Simic told journalists.

President Boris Tadic of Serbia also noted that the court had not charged genocide, but he urged his nation's parliament to pass a motion condemning the Srebrenica massacre.

Legal have said that the threshold for proving genocide is high under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide, requiring proof that the Serbian government intended to kill people based on their nationality, ethnicity or religious belief, and not merely to support the Bosnian Serb military.

But that standard was lost on much of Bosnia's Muslim leadership, as well as relatives of those killed at the hands of Serbian forces.

"I am speechless," said Fadila Efendic, whose son and husband were killed in Srebrenica.

"We know that Serbia was directly involved," she told reporters. "We saw Serbian troops shell us and kill our sons and husbands. We saw them commit genocide here."

Croat of the presidency Zeljko Komsic said he was shocked that the court had been unable to find Serbia guilty.

"We must respect the court's ruling, but I know what I will teach my children," he said.

A spokesman for Human Rights Watch called the verdict a "mixed judgment."

"We believe that there was plenty of evidence linking Serbia with serious crimes," said Richard Dicker, the director of the group's international justice program.

But he added: "The court did not find direct involvement in the act of genocide by Serbia, which is a very different issue from whether or not Serbia supported the Bosnian Serbs. The decision should in no way take away from that fact."