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

Sivac had testified in The Hague. Sentenced to serve seven years for his crimes, Kvočka was
granted early release in March 2005. Until Kvočka sold his apartment in 2008, Sivac encountered
him almost daily. Recounting this, Fatima Fazlić said: “And that is only one example,
and there are hundreds of those.” 280
The intensity of victims’ dissatisfaction with ICTY sentences varies, but all whom we
interviewed in the municipality of Prijedor were disappointed. Recalling that “Bosnians had
big hopes, major expectations from the fact that the Hague Tribunal was established,” Emsuda
Mujagić says that “in a certain way, the victims feel to be even more offended and damaged
very often by those sentences issued by the court in the Hague in relation to what they have
originally expected from the Hague.” 281 Muharem Murselović, a survivor of the Omarska concentration
camp who has testified in several ICTY trials, describes the overall attitude of
Muslims from Prijedor this way: “We had a very positive attitude towards those trials in The
Hague, always very welcome. But we have always been disappointed with the sentences.” 282
Another Omarska survivor, Mirsad Duratović, does not have a “very positive attitude” about the
justice dispensed in The Hague. Saying that individuals can be charged “for over 400 years”
for committing murder in the United States, he finds sentences for mass murderers imposed
by the ICTY painfully short. 283
It has been said that victims of unspeakable crimes “are always dissatisfied” with sentences
imposed by a court. Nidžara Ahmetašević, who was wounded by Serb snipers early in
the years-long siege of Sarajevo, tried to demonstrate the point by describing her own response
when Stanislav Galić received the maximum ICTY sentence for his role commanding the
siege: “I’m from Sarajevo, and I’m really disappointed with the life sentence for Galić. You’re
always unsatisfied.” 284 (As noted below, however, many who lived through the siege were
deeply gratified by the life sentence imposed on Galić.) Hatidža Mehmedović, who lost her
husband, brothers, teenage sons, parents, and scores of extended family members during the
Srebrenica genocide, evinces a similar self-awareness when she describes survivors’ views of
ICTY sentencing: “[W]e are … not happy with the sentences, with the verdicts, because what
would be the verdict that would be convenient for a crime committed here in Srebrenica of
which you have seen the consequences?” 285 So, too, does Sead Golić, who told us his brother
was shot at close range and buried in a mass grave in Brčko. “No matter how strict or serious
or high [a sentence] would be, no verdict would replace my brother or some other victim.” 286
Yet we found that many victims are discriminating in their assessment of ICTY sentences;
those who condemned short sentences readily acknowledged their satisfaction when the ICTY
imposed sentences that seemed commensurate with the defendant’s crimes. For example,
while highly critical of the short sentences that sent some defendants back to Prijedor soon
after judgment was pronounced, Edin Ramulić described a very different reaction when
another Prijedor defendant, Milomir Stakić, received a more substantial sentence. At trial,
Stakić received a sentence of life in prison, and this “was very important for us symbolically,”
Ramulić recalled. Although Stakić’s sentence was reduced to 40 years on appeal, Ramulić had
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