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

course we are backed up with the United Nations and we’ll do our job the best we know
based on justice, law.” And to them it must have seemed pretty perfect. At the same time
here there were people who were running the country in high political circles who were
the people who committed the crimes. 507
The burden of time is also taking a toll on victims. Particularly during our most recent
visit to Bosnia in July 2009, we heard repeatedly of witness fatigue. Although the subject arose
principally in the context of challenges facing Bosnia’s relatively new war crimes chamber, 508
it points up the dilemma many victims feel sixteen years into the ICTY’s work: While still
desperate for justice, many are deeply frustrated by how long it is taking; growing numbers
are weary of participating in trials.
Describing the challenges that Bosnia’s war crimes chamber faces, Vehid Šehić noted
that some who are in a position to provide eyewitness testimony, though willing to do so ten
years ago, are growing reluctant to do so after beginning new lives as refugees abroad or as
returnees in Bosnia. Šehić told us that the former often say: “I started a new life here, I don’t
want to spoil my future with that terrible past.” Those who have returned to towns that were
“ethnically cleansed” similarly fear that “something bad may happen if they testify.” Yet Šehić
adds: “It’s not that they don’t want to see justice satisfied; they do.” But they fear that testifying
“could spoil their future.” 509
As a journalist who covers war crimes prosecutions, Nidžara Ahmetašević sees the
other side of the coin. She says, “I don’t believe anybody who says victims are tired of the
whole process. They’re not, they want to talk.” Of course there are exceptions, Ahmetašević
acknowledges. Yet every day, her office receives letters “from victims who want to tell their
story.” Ahmetašević says there are “thousands” of such people, who are “afraid they will die
and take their stories with them.” 510 (In light of these concerns, it may be worth noting that
some recent trials have been better managed.) 511
4. The extended impunity of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić
As noted earlier, for a variety of reasons Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian
Serbs’ wartime political and military leaders, respectively, loom especially large in Bosnians’
assessment of the ICTY’s performance. Here, we focus on the symbolic impact of their
extended impunity, describing how their ability to elude capture for over a decade512 has colored
Bosnians’ broader perceptions of the ICTY. Then, we consider how Bosnians have reacted to
the belated capture of Karadžić in July 2008.
During our first sets of interviews for this study in November–December 2006 and
June 2007, when both suspects were still fugitives from justice, we heard repeatedly that their
continued at-large status threatened to overshadow whatever the Tribunal had accomplished.
As law professor Jasna Bakšić Muftić put it, “The ICTY has done so many good things but
THAT SOMEONE GUILTY BE PUNISHED 77