Verdicts are bittersweet. Even when they are in your favor, in many cases justice can never be served. In murder cases, the victim cannot be brought back. In exonerations for wrongful convictions, nothing can make up for the years a person lost in prison.
I had one of these bittersweet moments when I saw the live webcast of the ICTY’s Radovan Karadžić verdict. For those who aren’t familiar with this name, Karadžić was a Bosnian Serb leader during the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. This gruesome conflict resulted in the death of over 100,000 people, marking the worst conflict in European history since World War II.
Much of the international community sees Karadžić as one of the greatest criminals in recent history. Charged with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, he led a campaign of ethnic cleansing that forced millions of people from their homes, many of them tortured and raped in detention camps. His charges also include the massacre of Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces slaughtered 8,000 Muslim boys and men, and the siege of Sarajevo.
On March 24, 2016, more than twenty years after the crimes he as well as Ratko Mladić, Dragan Nikolić, and many other Serb commanders committed, a verdict was reached. Karadžić was found guilty of 10 out of the 11 charges he was faced with, including 9 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and 1 charge of genocide relating to the Srebrenica massacre. His has a 40-year prison sentence.
The verdict has been applauded all over the world. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon noted the judgment sent a strong signal to the international community. “Fugitives cannot outrun the international community’s collective resolve to make sure they face justice according to the law.” The decision itself, though it will likely be appealed, marked a historic day for international justice. With regard to perpetrators of international crimes, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein from the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights said, “no matter how powerful they are, no matter how untouchable they imagine themselves to be, no matter what continent they inhabit, the perpetrators of such crimes must know that they will not escape justice.”[1]
While the decision was significant in many respects, what was bittersweet about it was the limitation this “justice” provided. The verdict did not wipe away the years of agony and suffering hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and Croats went through. Bosnian women, many of whom consistently attended court and followed the case to its verdict, were still without fathers, husbands, and sons as a result of these military commanders. The verdict, though positive, was still painful for the victims themselves. It makes me wonder what justice really is. Is it justice when it takes more than twenty years to convict someone for committing horrific crimes? Can we really say a perpetrator like Karadžić did not escape justice, when he was able to live out most of his life free, only serving the last several years of his life in prison? Does this truly send a strong signal to the international community? And will this deter current international criminals from committing human rights abuses?
Saying let’s wait and see doesn’t provide as much comfort as I’d hope.
[General Ratko Mladić, who led the Bosnian Serb forces, is in the midst of his trial in The Hague. His case will likely reach a verdict in 2017].
[1] UN welcomes ‘historic’ guilty verdict against Radovan Karadžić (Mar. 24, 2016), available at http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53537#.VvWJeMcyfdk
