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

Two months after the hearing, the court issued its sentencing judgment. Despite her
senior leadership role in extremely grave crimes—factors the Trial Chamber recognized
as aggravating circumstances355 —Plavšić was sentenced to only 11 years’ imprisonment. 356
(Because she was granted early release, she will end up serving only 2/3 of this sentence). 357
Without explaining how it reached this precise sentence, the Trial Chamber gave substantial
weight to the views of witnesses who had testified about the potential value the defendant’s
guilty plea “could have for the reconciliation process in the region.” 358
One factor that the chamber did not take into account when it determined Plavšić’s sentence
was her unwillingness to cooperate with the prosecutor by providing testimony in other
defendants’ cases, as Erdemović has done. 359 (Later, however, she testified under court order
in the case of Momčilo Krajišnik.) 360 Noting that the ICTY’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence
explicitly mention “the substantial cooperation with the Prosecutor by the convicted person” 361
as the only example of a mitigating factor in sentencing, the Trial Chamber said “it does not
follow that failure to do so is an aggravating circumstance. Therefore, the accused’s unwillingness
to give evidence is not a factor to be taken into account in determining sentence.” 362
In Bosnia, many victims were astonished by the sentence, which Mujesira Memisević
described as “outrageously low.” Memisević, whose husband, children and other relatives were
slaughtered, told a reporter, “I am speechless. I cannot talk at all. I am shivering, I am completely
shaken.” 363 Muharem Murselović, a survivor of Omarska, commented: “Eleven years
for all those lives, for all the sufferings is only a drop in the ocean and we, the former camp
inmates, cannot be satisfied with that.” 364 When we interviewed Nerma Jelačić, then the Bosnia
director of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, in December 2006, she reflected:
“There was no impact of Biljana Plavšić’s confession [on victims]. It got lost in the injustice
they saw with the sentence given.” 365 Commenting on Plavšić’s sentence, Sevima Sali-Terzić,
legal advisor to the Bosnian Constitutional Court, said: “It doesn’t really look like an institution
that can bring justice.” 366
While many Bosniaks felt betrayed by Plavšić’s sentence, some Bosnian Serb politicians
condemned the sentence as too harsh. Milorad Dodik, at the time the former prime minister of
Republika Srpska (and since re-elected to the same post), told a reporter: “I am very depressed
by this sentence and think that international justice was unjust to Biljana Plavšić.” 367
Despite their disappointment, for some victims Plavšić’s “guilty plea and call to other
leaders to follow her example” outweighed their disappointment in her sentence. 368 But in
the face of Bosnian Serbs’ failure to follow her lead in acknowledging responsibility, some
who initially placed hope in Plavšić’s confession have been disappointed. Interviewed more
than three years after Plavšić was sentenced, attorney Edina Rešidović recalled, “We somehow
were expecting the others [i.e., other Bosnian Serbs] to realize what was going on but we were
wrong. Serbs proclaimed her as a traitor and victims thought it was her way to get out with a
short term of imprisonment.” 369
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