on crimes committed “in the other direction” might be thought of as an exercise in comparative victimization, functioning as a type of avoidance or denial. This study is concerned with internal discourses rather than comparative victimization. While at some point it will be essential for citizens of all the countries of the former Yugoslavia to generate, through discussion, debate, and research, an account that recognizes all the crimes committed in the name of various “national” interests and identities, a necessary condition for this to occur is that people in each of those countries reach something like a consensus about their own responsibility. For accounts to be compared externally, internal accounts have to have already been developed.
The Problem of Precedence
In all the former Yugoslav states involved in armed conflict, concurrent struggles were taking place. One involved armed forces and paramilitaries fighting one another while simultaneously, often, committing crimes against the civilian population. Another involved the nationalist-authoritarian regimes of these states abusing their power through corruption, repression, and some crimes against domestic political opponents—broadly put, wars of states against the societies they claimed to represent. These struggles were sometimes violent, but usually carried out by administrative and cultural means.23 Now that the regimes that carried out these struggles are for the most part out of power,24 the question whether international or domestic crimes should receive priority is a matter of recurrent controversy. Crucially relating to the question of trials and extraditions, there is a sense that given constraints of time, domestic trials might preclude international ones, and vice versa.
Violations of International Law
Most international interest concentrates on the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the wars of succession from 1991 onward. This is reflected in the founding of ICTY, the one international institution most involved in investigating and prosecuting these crimes. It is also reflected in the subsequent founding of special courts and prosecutors for war crimes in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.25
ICTY is obligated by its statute to investigate and prosecute three types of offenses: war crimes, crimes against humanity,26 and genocide. The UN resolution that established the Tribunal sets forth as its principal goals “to put an end to such crimes and to take effective measures to bring to justice the persons who are responsible for them,” and also to “contribute to the restoration and maintenance of peace.”27
When Slobodan Milošević was arrested in April 2001, there existed an international charge for war crimes and crimes against humanity against him and four other political and military leaders of Serbia in connection with one incident—a massacre of civilians in the Kosovo town of Račak (Reçak) in January 1999. After his arrest the indictment against him was revised to include charges of genocide. Charges of genocide were filed against a number of wartime political and military leaders of the Serb entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina,28 but have not been applied to the leadership of the Serbian regime with the exception of Milošević.29
Political leaders from the war period may have believed that they could escape prosecution and persuade the public that their crimes were, if not themselves legitimate, committed in a context that made them retrospectively legitimate. Such a conclusion is suggested by the behavior of Milošević on his arrest in 2001. At that moment both international and domestic prosecutors discussed the possibility of wide-ranging charges being laid against him. But the only charges that had actually been filed were ICTY’s charges for the Račak massacre and a set of domestic charges for abuse of an official position for political power and personal gain. Milošević himself opened the door to new domestic and international war crimes charges in an appeal filed shortly after his arrest The appeal denies diverting money from the state budget for personal gain, claiming instead that any diverted money was secretly used to finance paramilitaries in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia and to supply SRJ state security services.30 This constituted an invitation for questions about direct connections between his regime and the organizations that had proximate responsibility for international crimes to be brought into the legal procedures against Milošević. Milošević’s appeal claimed a level of state involvement that he had always denied while he was in power, with implications both for the character of the “joint criminal enterprise” to violate international humanitarian law and for the civil suits brought by Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina against SRJ.
In terms of criminal liability under international law, the incidents of greatest interest are the following:
1. Massacres of the civilian population. The largest massacre occurred in Srebrenica in 1995, when forces under the command of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladić, after conquering the town, rounded up and murdered at least 7,000 residents. Three military officers have also been charged with the massacre of about 300 civilians who took refuge in a hospital outside Vukovar in Croatia in 1991. They were tried and retried several times in domestic courts before a verdict was reached by ICTY, while a local politician accused of complicity in the massacre committed suicide in prison in 1998.
2. War against civilian populations. Several cities were besieged during the wars, the best-known cases being Vukovar, which was almost completely demolished by bombing in 1991, and Sarajevo, which was the object of constant sniper and missile attacks between 1992 and 1995. Attacks not demonstrably related to any military objective were made against other cities, including Tuzla and Dubrovnik, as well. Charges of this nature can also be applied for less concentrated and smaller-scale incidents, such as destruction of property after taking a territory or with the goal of intimidating residents of an area.
3. Measures designed to forcibly change the ethnic structure of a local population. These include forced resettlement, intimidation, imprisonment, and also murder. All these means were used to force members of different ethnic groups to relocate, creating monoethnic territories, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992–1993, in Croatia in 1995, and in Kosovo by one side in 1999, and by another side afterward. These are the actions for which the distasteful, imprecise, and distressingly widespread term “ethnic cleansing” was invented.31
4. Murder, rape, and torture of prisoners. Several prison and relocation camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina became known for the abuse of prisoners, and some of these have already become the subject of prosecutions. The ICTY’s earliest, largest, and most complex cases included prosecutions against people suspected of abuses at the KP Dom Foča, Omarska, Trnopolje, and Keraterm camps. In one of the first cases to be prosecuted against Bosnian Muslim forces, three people were convicted of murder and war crimes (but not crimes against humanity) in connection with atrocities at the Čelebići camp in 1992.
Violations of Domestic Law
Especially in the months just following the removal of Milošević from power in 2000, considerable attention was paid to revelations regarding abuses of power for personal and financial gain. These included the distribution of state property in the form of luxurious houses and apartments, manipulation of the banking and currency exchange systems, and corruption in connection with the sale and privatization of state-owned corporations. Charges concentrated heavily on a few figures who are widely considered to have been the main exponents of regime corruption: former premier Mirko Marjanović,32 former deputy premier Nikola Šainović,33 former customs director Mihalj Kertesz,34 and others.35 A few cases went to trial: Kertesz was tried for diverting public funds through offshore banks, and the Karić brothers, who built a business, banking, and media empire through regime patronage, were eventually compelled to leave the country. Milošević’s wife Mirjana Marković was charged, together with her daughter Marija, with minor real estate offenses (as she has been in hiding she has not formally answered the charges).36 Like other charges not directly related to acts of violence, it is entirely possible that behind the prosecutions and threats of prosecutions may lie other motives: either to assure compliance or to persuade
