Court Convicts a Bosnian Serb General of Genocide
Source: New York Times
By MARLISE SIMONS
Published: December 12, 2012
PARIS — A former senior commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Zdravko Tolimir, was convicted of genocide on Wednesday and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings of thousands of prisoners near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.
Judges at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague, voting 2 to 1, said that Mr. Tolimir had been found guilty because as the army’s head of intelligence he not only knew of the plans to commit “horrific mass murder” of Bosnian Muslim prisoners but also played a pivotal role in the crime. He “deliberately participated” in the destruction of the Muslim communities under United Nations protection in the towns of Srebrenica and Zepa, the judges said.
The presiding judge, Christoph Flügge of Germany, said several times that Mr. Tolimir, 64, had failed in his duty to protect the prisoners of war before they were led away to the killing sites, inside buildings and on open fields. The crimes that followed were “massive in scale, severe in intensity and devastating in their effect,” he said.
Mr. Tolimir, a general, was the right-hand man of the overall Bosnian Serb Army commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, whose trial was in progress in a nearby courtroom when the genocide verdict was issued ...
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/europe/zdravko-tolimir-former-commander-of-bosnian-serb-army-is-convicted-of-genocide.html?_r=0
= new reply since forum marked as read
