Committee on Conscience | Analysis

Home >> Analysis >> August 7, 2008, The arrest of Karadzic: a Srebrenica survivor's perspective

TOOLS

AUGUST 7, 2008, THE ARREST OF KARADZIC: A SREBRENICA SURVIVOR'S PERSPECTIVE

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: This is Bridget Conley-Zilkic. Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention. With me today is Hasan Nuhanovic who is a survivor of Srebrenica. Srebrenica was a small town in Eastern Bosnia that in 1995 when it fell to Bosnian Serb forces some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim, Bosniak men and boys were murdered. Hasan, thank you for being with me today.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: Thank you for inviting me.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: I wanted to speak with you today about work in general, but also more specifically about the recent arrest of Radovan Karadzic and the transfer of him to The Hague to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. When you heard the news that he'd been arrested what was your first thought?

HASAN NUHANOVIC: Okay, so this is the question which I was asked more than 100 times since Sunday last week, because that's when he was arrested or Saturday of last week. I was sitting in my sitting room at home. It was quite late. My daughter was in her room. My daughter is ten years old. So when she was born this guy was already a fugitive. She wasn't even born at the time when he perpetrated these terrible crimes. It's just the strange situation that my daughter shouts from her room, she has a TV in her room, saying, “Father, they arrested Karadzic.” She is ten years old and she knows who Karadzic is and the news came from my daughter to me. I felt really strange at this situation.

I didn't feel anything special in particular. I mean, first I really didn't believe that this had happened, but then I realized that this news was broadcast at several different TV stations. And then that was it. I wanted to go to bed. Okay, I said, “That's good. They arrested him and that's it.” However, my concern when I heard the news, and even before he was arrested, whenever people like internationals, people from other countries, foreigners ask me the question in relation to the fact that both Karadzic and Mladic were still at large as the key figures, as the-- as they say major war criminals.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And just to explain for people who don't know, Radovan Karadzic was the so-called president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic and Ratko Mladic was the general.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: The commander, yes. He commanded the army. I was always concerned that the attention was going to be diverted from the fact that there are still hundreds and thousands of war criminals at large in Bosnia. Not only those who had perpetrated war crimes against civilians in Srebrenica region, but also in other parts of Bosnia. There were other locations where terrible atrocities were perpetrated. That was my concern.

I was even more concerned when Karadzic was arrested that now the time has come that the world will look only in one direction. Okay, let's put Karadzic behind the bars in The Hague in the Netherlands. Let's try him before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. Let's finish Mladic as well, let's do the same with Mladic and let's close down the ICTY, the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia. There was already a plan, what they called an “exit strategy” to actually close down this tribunal which was made public a couple of years ago. We-- when I say we I mean the survivors, the families of the victims -- we complain against this exit strategy, because we thought that it should not be closed down before at least a certain number of war criminals are arrested and tried.

However the plan was to actually close this tribunal down as soon as the verdicts are delivered against Karadzic and Mladic. It means that in the next couple of years the tribunal will work. There will be trails. Ongoing trials will be completed and trials against Karadzic and Mladic, perhaps Mladic if he's also arrested will be completed and that's it. The world had enough of Srebrenica. They want to look the other way. That's my feeling. And that's my concern when we speak of the arrest of Karadzic.

What I think should be done besides these court proceedings in The Hague is the whole process which has been initiated a couple of years ago with the intervention of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The High Representative, he represents the European Union and United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Four years ago it was the British politician Paddy Ashdown with his initiative, and some people around him, and some of the local politicians, the state court and state prosecutor's office on the state level, Bosnia and Herzegovina was set up. That was not envisaged by the Dayton Accord which was signed 13 years ago in the United States. There was not supposed to be a court on the state level to try the war criminals. It was a big step forward.

Now what we have in Sarajevo, in the capital, is this court and the prosecutor's office in the same building. They've already arrested, I think, more than 50 war crimes suspects. And when I heard, actually it's not only that I heard, I was present when the head of the war crimes chamber -- I think it's an American prosecutor who is in charge of this department of the prosecutor's office -- when he presented the figures on how many cases have been reported to the prosecutor's office and to the court, war crimes cases: they have the figure of 12,000 war crimes cases coming from different locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

So, okay, we can be satisfied if Karadzic was arrested, arrested and going to be tried before the ICTY. Mladic may be arrested as well. But what is going to happen with these 12,000 cases, war crimes cases in Bosnia? This means that thousands and thousands of war criminals are still at large in Bosnia and in order for us to have normalization, reconciliation, to rebuild our country, to rebuild our lives, we actually need to put these war criminals behind the bars. That's the task of the state court. And that's what I wanted to emphasize and just to illustrate how serious this problem is.

I never met Karadzic in my life, because he was a political leader and he was not accessible, he was not moving to other places were I was moving. He was not there with the ordinary people and the same counts for Mladic. But the people who killed my mother, for example, because my mother, after the Srebrenica massacre, my mother was killed a few days later in a prison in our hometown called Vlasenica, which is around 100 kilometers from Sarajevo. Those individuals who murdered my mother -- I've learned this from a Serb man who actually gave me this information a couple of years ago -- they still live in Vlasenica. If I went to Vlasenica, it's a town with two or three streets it is very likely that I would actually encounter one of those murderers of my mother.

My question is: how can someone imagine life in Bosnia, life in the country where the survivors of genocide like myself, can meet the perpetrators in the street who have not been even indicted or suspected of any crimes? The police in charge of the area tolerate these crimes; the police actually will not investigate these individuals. It has been 13 years since 1995 and these individuals walk around as free citizens. That is the situation in the country at this time.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: For you, what is the record of the ICTY thus far? Has it proven helpful for survivors in trying to know better what happened, or to feel some sense of justice that some of the leadership at least, even if these men on the street who are directly involved in killing are still at large, does it give you any sense of justice that the leadership has been put on trial?

HASAN NUHANOVIC: Yes it does. It does, I think, but those trials in The Hague, this is my opinion, will not affect the lives of the ordinary people so much. There will be some political implications. I think there will be serious political implications after these trials against the political and military leaders, for example, of the Bosnian Serbs, although the Bosnian Serbs are not the only ones who are being tried before ICTY. It's also Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks, and Croats, but actually very few of them in comparison to the number of the Bosnian Serbs being tried. The political and military leadership, the top level and a number of individuals from the middle level of this pyramid are being tried there. But, again, the lives of the ordinary people in Bosnia and Herzegovina are directly affected by the fact that thousands of war criminals are still in their neighborhood. They live in their-- they are in our neighborhood. The man who was responsible, and that has been confirmed, who was actually in charge of the prison where my mother was murdered still lives and works in Sarajevo. He moved from Vlasenica to the capital to Sarajevo and he works on the state level institution, it's Ministry of Security. He is an advisor to the Minister of Security.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And Sarajevo is the same city where you live.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: That's where I live and that's where I work. This situation has been there for three or four years. Can you imagine my life in a city where a potential suspect in the murder of my mother lives and works in the same city as I do? So what do I do in this situation? What am I supposed to do? I would be satisfied if I see this person arrested and behind the bars and tried before the court.

To go back to the ICTY, also what I think is important in terms of the impact that will be achieved by the war court, the ICTY, even though it's going to be closed quite soon in a couple years, is actually the message it is going to send to all of the different nations in the former Yugoslavia -- including the Serbs, both those Serbs in Serbia and those living in Bosnia or Croatia. Because without the court and without the verdicts delivered by the international courts set up by United Nations, all of the stories about genocide, about mass atrocities, about killings would have been perceived by the Bosnian Serbs as unconfirmed stories, rumors and so on. Once such an institution, a United Nations Court rules that someone is responsible for genocide, or war crimes, or crimes against humanity it will be written in the school books forever, in history books, whether or not people -- Serbs, Croats or Bosnian Muslims -- like it or not. It will be the fact. This is important.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Yes, that is very important.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: Yes.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: I also wanted to ask you as a final question about some of the work that you are doing in the courts yourself, particularly a recent case you brought against Dutch peacekeepers who were in Srebrenica when the town fell to Bosnian Serbs and who were there and basically oversaw the separation of men and boys from women and children, which was done by the Bosnian Serbs. What is the case that you're bringing and where is it now?

HASAN NUHANOVIC: The keyword, you just mentioned the keyword: they “oversaw” the separation of the men and boys from the women and young children. Actually this word is only partially true because they didn't only oversee the separation, they actually themselves, the Dutch soldiers and also themselves in one way assisted the Serbs to get hold of the men and the boys who at that time sought refuge on the U.N., that battalion compound.

It was the Dutch themselves who on 13 July 1995, two days after the Serbs entered Srebrenica town it was the Dutch soldiers and officers who forcibly expelled 5 to 6,000 Bosniaks. They made them walk from the large workshop within the base to the main gate of the U.N. compound and at the main gate the Serbs were standing waiting for these people. That is where the separation took place. It was the Dutch who assisted the Serbs to get hold of the people who were inside the U.N. compound. This is a historical fact. However, what happens in the case in The Hague is that now the state, which is represented by a team of lawyers denies these facts, denies these historical facts.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And this is the Dutch state.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: This is the Dutch state. They actually deny it. They actually say that this had never taken place. However, in the reports which had already been compiled by the institutions in the Netherlands this story that I am now referring to has already been confirmed by various other reports. What the Dutch state is trying to do now is to defend its face by all means, but...

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And what are the charges that you've brought against them?

HASAN NUHANOVIC: My lawyer, a team of lawyers representing me and one of them is in charge, it's Liesbeth Zegveld. It's a law firm from Amsterdam and they're all Dutch. She formulated this in terms of legal definition of the violation, which was, how do you say, perpetrated. The formulation is gross negligence and torte. That's my understanding but, one thing is how you legally define your charges and the other thing is what actually happened in reality. What happened in reality cannot be sometimes defined by very narrow legal definitions.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: At what stage is this case?

HASAN NUHANOVIC: It is actually in the final stage. It has taken me six years. I initiated the case six years ago. I had to work on it almost every day, every week, every month. I sent lots of documents, statements to my lawyer. She was trying to put the case together, so she dealt mostly with the legal issues. I dealt with the facts and it took us both six years to actually bring this case to its final phase. The court -- it's the District Court in The Hague, it's the national court in The Hague, it's not international court -- should deliver the first instance verdict, on September 10th, 2008, which is one month from now.

BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Thank you. And we'll follow up when the verdict comes back. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me today.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: Thank you.

NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you'll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.