May 8, 1996

Far From Former Yugoslavia, First War Crimes Trial Opens

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  • Benjamin Ferencz, Former Chief Prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials
    By MARLISE SIMONS

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The horrors of the smashed and ransacked villages of northern Bosnia were brought into court Tuesday as a U.N. tribunal opened the first trial to deal with war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

    Accused is Dusan Tadic, 40, a Serbian policeman, who is to be tried on 31 counts, including crimes against humanity, that involve the persecution, killing and torture of Muslims in and around Serbian-run prison camps in 1992.

    The court said that his trial, which is expected to last several months, is only a first step in what it hopes will be a full examination of the atrocities committed on all sides in the Balkan conflict and in particular of "ethnic cleansing" that took tens of thousands of civilian lives.

    Tuesday, as the three judges in their red and black robes took their seats in Chamber II, they became the first international body to sit in judgment of war crimes since the trials held in Germany and Japan after World War II.

    Tadic, though never an important figure in Serbian ranks, is the first of 57 suspects to go on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal. He was arrested in Germany in February 1994 when Muslim survivors identified him.

    Besides Tadic, six other defendants are in custody, two more in The Netherlands, two in Germany and two in Bosnia.

    But major figures in the war, like Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the military commander, also indicted for war crimes, remain at large.

    Unlike the victors of World War II who ran the military tribunals of 1946, this civil court has no power to arrest suspects, and its civilian prosecutors have complained that they do not get cooperation from NATO or other governments trying to settle the Balkan war.

    At 10 a.m., Tadic, also known as Dusko, was brought into the pristine courtroom custom-made for the tribunal. He briefly waved at someone in the public gallery, which is separated from the chamber by bulletproof glass, and sat quietly for much of the day between two guards, occasionally taking notes. He followed the English language proceedings through earphones that offered a translation in Serbo-Croatian.

    He has three defense lawyers, two Dutchmen and one Briton, whose fees and expenses are paid by the court.

    In her opening statement, the presiding judge, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States, said that "this trial has certain historic dimensions," but that the accused, who has pleaded not guilty, "is entitled to a fair trail and to insure he receives one is our paramount purpose for being here."

    Almost immediately, the judge granted a request by the prosecution to drop one specific charge of rape against Tadic. The prosecution said that the rape victim, a Muslim woman, said she would not testify because she was afraid of reprisal. Tadic was accused of raping her at the Omarska prison camp in 1992. Charges that he took part in gang rape there remain.

    Among the precedents the court is likely to set is that rape will be considered a war crime. The court has collected wide evidence that rape was used systematically by Serbs to terrorize and humiliate victims and to help tear up Muslim communities.

    Grant Niemann, an Australian who is one of three senior prosecutors, said in his opening statement that the trial would examine events of "unspeakable horror." In the Prijedor region of northwestern Bosnia, in 1992, the Muslim population of 50,000 was reduced to about 1,000, he said.

    In that region, in the village of Kozarac, Tadic owned the Nippon Cafe and taught karate, holding a black belt himself. The prosecutor said that as Serbian nationalism spread, Tadic joined the police, turned against his Muslim friends and began to rise "from relative obscurity to become a person of influence, useful to Serbian military and civilians."

    On May 24, 1992, when Serbian shelling of Kozarac began, he assisted the artillery by flying flares over his designated targets, and as civilians were rounded up, he called out names of those to be separated and shot. When Tadic went to three concentration camps in the area, -- Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje, where, the prosecutor charged, he went to torture, rape and kill, "he did so beyond his ordinary duties as a policeman."

    He seemed in a superior position, said the prosecutor, and "he could enter camps at random, he could bring his accomplices with him to assist him in his rampage."

    The prosecutor said that on those rampages, Tadic took part in "killings, torture, sexual assaults," including several gang rapes. In the Omarska camp, he forced two prisoners "to commit sexual oral acts" on others in the camp and forced one prisoner to bite off the testicles of another, who died of his wounds. The prosecution said Tuesday that it intends to call more than 80 witnesses in the coming weeks.

    Tadic has protested his innocence since his detention two years ago.

    On Monday in a telephone conversation with a Dutch television station, he said, "absolute lies have been told about me." He said that witnesses would clear his name if they could testify via satellite from Banja Luka in Bosnia. If this were not allowed, he said he would go on a hunger strike.

    Lawyers for the defense have said they have found it difficult to get witnesses to talk to them and some have said they would not travel to The Hague for fear of being arrested. They said they planned to call 36 witnesses.

    Tuesday, the court ruled that a number of witnesses would be permitted to testify by satellite.