30 years have passed since the establishment of the International Tribunal for War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia, which brought to justice some of the most responsible for crimes during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, including Slobodan Milošević.
The first war crimes tribunal that is Mrs established by the United Nations, brought to justice some of those most responsible for the war crimes committed between 1991 and 2001 against members of various nations in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Macedonia, but not everyone in the area was satisfied. Among those who were tried, the two most responsible for the genocide in Srebrenica are: Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžićwho was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
The Hague-based court was unanimously established by the UN Security Council on May 25, 1993 in response to mass crimes in war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. It was the first international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II. global war. The first indictment was issued in November 1994, the first trial began in May 1996.
Of the 161 defendants, among whom were presidents of governments and states, high-ranking military commanders and police officers, ministers, 90 were convicted. The Hague prosecutors filed the last indictment on December 31, 2004, and the last verdict was handed down by the court on November 29, 2017 in dramatic circumstances, when the Bosnian Croat Slobodan Praljak committed suicide in the courtroom by ingesting poison.
Trials at the court, which dealt with a range of crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes as well as violations of the Geneva Conventions, lasted a total of almost 11,000 days. 4,650 witnesses appeared.
Milošević was the first president of the country at the time to be indictedIn May 1999, it was the first international court to indict the then president of the country – the Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo between 1991 and 1999. He died in custody in 2006 before the verdict was pronounced.
Several of the most important defendants – from the later acquitted Croatian general Antej Gotovina to Karadžić and Mladić – were extradited by the countries only because of pressures in the context of progress on the way to the European Union. The last, the 161st defendant, was only arrested in July 2011, just a little earlier than the penultimate after 16 years of hiding, Mladić, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2017 also for the genocide in Srebrenica.
Among other things, the court unequivocally proved, just like the International Court of Justice, that in the massacre of 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in 1995, genocide took place – the planned killing of members of one nationality. It has made great progress in the prosecution of sexual violence. Among other things, rape has also been recognized as a weapon of war used to intimidate, persecute and terrorize the enemy, and it has also contributed to the development of international criminal and humanitarian law and influenced the creation of other international tribunals, such as the tribunals for Rwanda and Sierra Leone , as well as to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
After 24 years, the court ended its work on November 30, 2017, and the proceedings were taken over by the Mechanism for International Criminal Courts (MICT).
Source: Rtvslo
