That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

in the . Srebrenica genocide. Many Bosnians are unaware of the extent to which Erdemović
has assisted the ICTY prosecutor in other cases, and virtually all believe that five years is an
indefensibly short sentence for a crime of this order.
The second guilty plea that arose repeatedly during our interviews is that of Biljana
Plavšić, a close associate of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić who later became
president of the Bosnian Serb Republic herself. Although unwilling to agree to cooperate with
the prosecutor in future cases, 13 Plavšić received a sentence of only eleven years for crimes
against humanity. Following its standard practice, the ICTY granted Plavšić early release in
September 2009.
As these examples suggest, guilty pleas in war crimes trials are unlikely to be seen by
victim populations as legitimate unless they fulfill two basic conditions: sentences should bear
an appropriate relationship to the gravity of crimes committed and defendants should commit
to cooperate with the Tribunal in exchange for a reduced sentence. Wherever possible, that
cooperation should include providing information about the location of mass graves.
Length and complexity of proceedings. Two interrelated concerns emerged with striking
regularity in our interviews. As Omarska survivor Muharem Murselović put it, the ICTY’s
“trials took too long, way too long [a]nd … these whole proceedings are too complicated.” 14 It
is not just direct victims who see the Tribunal this way. Members of Bosnia’s legal community
are just as concerned. Sevima Sali-Terzić, senior legal advisor to Bosnia’s Constitutional
Court, describes the ICTY in much the same way as Murselović: “The ICTY seems a distant,
complicated machinery. It has complicated procedures, its processes last forever.” 15
Inevitably, the four year long trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević,
which ended before judgment when the defendant died, has come to epitomize this impression
of the ICTY. Whatever the reasons for Milošević’s death before judgment—some of which
were beyond the ICTY’s control, others not—many Bosnians believe that the Tribunal’s unnecessarily
complex procedures deprived them of the justice of a verdict in this case.
“Tyrants on Trial.” Moreover, the Milošević trial established a precedent that has vexed
many victims—the specter of defendants, opting to represent themselves, transforming the
courtroom into a political platform. In a report published last year, the Justice Initiative provided
an in-depth analysis of how courts, including the ICTY, have met the challenges presented
by “tyrants on trial” who represent themselves. 16 In this study however, we provide
another perspective: We describe how ICTY judges’ failure to control dictators in the dock has
tarnished Bosnians’ experience of justice.
Long-lasting impunity: Karadžić and Mladić. It has often been noted that, while the
international community has coalesced around the position that international courts should
use their limited resources to prosecute those who bear top responsibility for sweeping atrocities,
survivors often place greater store in seeing direct perpetrators—the individuals who
raped them or killed their sons—brought to justice. Indeed, these are the people victims
may encounter daily at the supermarket or on the street, not the high-level officials who
THAT SOMEONE GUILTY BE PUNISHED 15