Excerpts from UN tribunal indictment against top Bosnian Serb suspects

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Excerpts from the 1995 UN war crimes tribunal indictment charging former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, with genocide and crimes against humanity in Bosnia:
  • "They are criminally responsible for the unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship."
  • "Thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians, including women, children and elderly persons, were detained ... for protracted periods of time. They were not afforded judicial process and their internment was not justified by military necessity. They were detained, in large measure, because of their national, religious and political identity. The conditions in the detention facilities were inhumane and brutal ... "In many instances, women and girls who were detained were raped at the camps or taken from the detention centers and raped or otherwise sexually abused at other locations. Daily food rations provided to detainees were inadequate and often amounted to starvation rations. Medical care for the detainees was insufficient or nonexistent and the general hygienic conditions were grossly inadequate."
  • "Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others, planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of unlawful attacks against the civilian population and individual civilians with weapons such as mortars, rockets and artillery."
  • "Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of the destruction of sacred sites or knew or had reason to know that subordinates were about to damage or destroy these sites or had done so and failed to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent them from doing so or to punish the perpetrators thereof."
  • "Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, individually and in concert with others planned, instigated, ordered or otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of the taking of civilians, that is UN peacekeepers, as hostages and, additionally, using them as `human shields."'