The arrest of Radovan Karadžić back in 2008 prompted me to write at some length about him and his life and times. See here.

Two pieces read nicely now. This one:

Karadžić looks to have been a second-rate romantic who became improbably entangled in Bosnian nationalist politics and then was carried away in his own self-importance once the conflict really started. He has to shoulder responsibility for many of the ghastly events occurring during the siege of Sarajevo and elsewhere in Bosnia in the first part of the 1990s. He consistently used his political authority to play games and waste lives.

In 1997 as HM Ambassador in Sarajevo I quietly suggested to London that I try secretly to meet Karadžić with a view to persuading him to surrender – I would have been the first senior international Serbian speaker he would have met. I reckoned that I could find a way to meet him – at that point he had not gone underground completely.

Foreign Secretary Robin Cook liked the idea, but allowed himself to be bamboozled by FCO tweebling and consulted Madeleine Albright, who said No.

So I held back. And it took eleven expensive and frustrating years to get him.

If the Tadic Serbs are smart they will hand him over to ICTY v quickly.

Then should follow a very long and involved (and maybe for some in the West embarrassing) legal process at the end of which he’ll be convicted and receive a massive sentence.

And this one: Is Karadžić Innocent?

His operational responsibility over the Bosnian Serb forces was self-evidently higher, as was his operational leadership capacity to influence political events for the better – hence also higher his legal/moral responsibility for horrors occurring when (and because?) he did not do so.

That said, for those very reasons of proximity he can (unlike Milosevic) attempt at his trial to drum up all sorts of arguments that for every given Bosnian Serb alleged war-crime he was acting closely in one way or the other with the ‘international community’ on the ground, in its various bungled efforts to bring peace to Bosnia.

And (unlike Milosevic) he can point in detail to Bosniac/Muslim and Croat military and political decisions which (he might say) forced the Serbs into justifiable self-defence measures.

Or he might dwell on the strange ways in which heavy weaponry found its way to the Bosniacs/Muslims during the conflict despite an international arms embargo, with various Western powers not exactly doing much to stop this.

He might force the Tribunal to look hard at the political and moral events leading to the outbreak of hostilities in Bosnia, where the Izetbegovic Muslim tendency arguably played a highly irresponsible role. If someone else recklessly starts a fire, is your legal responsibility somehow diminished if you behave badly in the ensuing panic?

And/or he could try to claim – and be able to show – that at different points senior international negotiators made him promises or otherwise deliberately and knowingly influenced his calculations in a way which is now highly embarrassing in some circles.

In short, he has lots of options for creating a circus, with all this grimly complex history being pored over for years in excruciating detail. There will be no shortage of money for top-end legal defence teams, if he wants them…

Eight years later Karadžić has been found guilty on numerous war crimes counts. Read the ICTY summary of its verdict here. It makes a powerful case that Karadžić variously was (a) sufficiently involved in close Bosnian Serb policy decisions that resulted in specific war crimes, and (b) either encouraged them, or (c) did not intervene to stop them happening, or (d) helped create diversions to stop them being properly investigated:

The Accused’s failure to exercise his authority to adequately prevent or punish crimes committed against non-Serbs gave the signal that such criminal acts would be tolerated throughout the period of the Overarching JCE and therefore had the effect of encouraging and facilitating the crimes which formed part of the objective of the JCE.

At the same time that he was learning about crimes committed against non-Serbs and not taking sufficient steps to prevent or punish them, the Accused consistently and systematically provided misleading information to representatives of international organisations, the public, and to the media in relation to these crimes. By his denials that Serb Forces were committing crimes in the Municipalities and his disingenuous portrayal of the reality on the ground, of which he was in fact fully aware, the Accused created an environment in which Serb Forces could continue to commit the crimes through which the common purpose of the Overarching JCE was implemented…

… the Chamber finds that the Accused ought to have known that the non-Serb population was vulnerable to violent crimes that might be perpetrated by members of the Serb Forces who were carrying out his common plan. The Accused was indifferent to that possibility and acted in furtherance of the common plan with the awareness of the possibility that these crimes might be committed during the execution of the common plan and he willingly took that risk…

Specifically on the Srebrenica killings:

… the Chamber recalls that although the Accused touted the opening of the corridor when speaking to the international press, in a closed session of the Bosnian Serb Assembly held weeks later, he expressed regret that the Bosnian Muslim males had managed to pass through Bosnian Serb lines. Accordingly, the Chamber considers that the only reasonable inference available on such evidence is that the Accused shared with Mladić, Beara, and Popović the intent that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed, which, in the Chamber’s view, amounts to the intent to destroy the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica as such.

The Chamber notes, however, that it can only conclude that the Accused agreed to the expanded common purpose as of the time of his conversation with Deronjić at 8 p.m. on 13 July. He therefore cannot be held responsible for the killings and the related acts of persecution which occurred prior to that time through his participation in the Srebrenica JCE.

Regarding those killings which occurred prior to his conversation with Deronjić on the night of 13 July, the Chamber finds that the Accused knew or had reason to know that crimes had been committed by his subordinates in the aftermath of the fall of the Srebrenica enclave and that he failed in his duty as Supreme Commander to take necessary and reasonable measures to punish the commission of genocide, murder, extermination, and killing as an underlying act of persecution. He is therefore criminally responsible for such failures pursuant to Article 7(3) of the Statute.  

And so on. The full judgement itself runs to 2600 pages. In such cases it’s always worth glancing at any dissents. Here the dissent by Judge Baird on the Markale market massacre in Sarajevo in February 1994 is interesting. The Serb side always claimed that the Bosnian Muslims had committed this atrocity against their own people to drum up international condemnation of the Serb side. Judge Baird is unconvinced that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bosnian Serbs were responsible:

The witness testified that at the meeting on 8 February between General Rose and the leadership of the Bosnian Muslim Military in Sarajevo, Rose stated that evidence was emerging that the market place shelling might have been carried out by their side. The witness testified that there was a complete silence after Rose’s statement; thereafter, the Bosnian Military leadership claimed that they had taped a conversation involving the Bosnian Serbs to the effect that they had confessed to the ‘atrocity’.

The witness further stated that the Bosnian government never produced any such tape or evidence to demonstrate that the Bosnian Serbs had fired the mortar. The production of this alleged tape would have put a firm and definitive end to this matter and would have been incontrovertible attestation to the guilt of the Bosnian Serb side. The tape however, was never produced and nothing further was said about it.This left one with the abiding impression that their story was an egregious lie. 

It is not insignificant that KW570 was a member of UNPROFOR at the time of the incident and he was also a Defence witness. The evidence he gave had the potential for casting doubt that the Bosnian Serb side was responsible for firing the shell. And this evidence formed an integral part of the Defence case…

… In the circumstances I am of opinion that the Accused must be acquitted of this charge.

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The jurisprudential importance of this case and others like it at ICTY is that it denies political leaders the argument that they were not sufficiently closely involved in war crimes committed by troops under their command to be held accountable for them. It draws on the concept of ‘reasonable foreseeability’ lifted straight from Common Law. The accused can not insist that s/he did not know what was going on if it is clear from the evidence that s/he ought to have known or was deliberately turning a blind eye.

This way of reasoning allows Karadžić fans to wail that the evidence is only ‘circumstantial’ and that there is no ‘proof’. But it is surely right in principle: we citizens want our leaders to take responsibility for their lofty decisions, and imposing on them a legal burden to think long and hard about the likely (and even unlikely) consequences of their actions/inactions is a good way to achieve that.

That said, there will be an appeal and it all will drag on a lot longer.

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Wider thoughts? See my next posting.