Serb leader from Croatia gets 35 years for war crimes

The military success of Operation Storm finally saved Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina from years of occupation, aggression and slaughter by Serbs such as Milan Martic.

Milan Martic with war criminal Radovan Karadzic in 1994

Serb leader from Croatia gets 35 years for war crimes

By Marlise Simons

International Herald Tribune
June 12, 2007

PARIS: The UN war crimes court established to hear cases from the former Yugoslavia found a former henchman of Slobodan Milosevic guilty Tuesday of multiple crimes while leading a Serbian separatist rebellion. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Milan Martic, 52, listened motionless as the UN judges called him "one of the most important and influential political figures" of the Serbian ministate of Krajina that broke off from Croatia in the early 1990s as Yugoslavia fell apart.

They convicted Martic of crimes against humanity, including murder, persecutions and torture of Croatian civilians and war crimes, including plunder and wanton destruction of civilian sites, churches, schools and entire villages.

Martic was also found guilty of ordering an unjustified two-day rocket attack on the Croatian capital, Zagreb, in 1995, in which seven people died and more than 200 were wounded. In the days after the attacks, Martic boasted in radio and newspaper interviews of giving the orders.

The defense had demanded an acquittal and described Martic as a hero and a protector of the Serb population. Prosecutors pressed for a life sentence.

The 35-year prison term handed down is high by the standards of the tribunal, which has completed proceedings against more than 100 people. Martic has already been in detention for five years, ever since he surrendered to the tribunal in 2002.

But the judges gave him little credit for turning himself in, because by then he had been on the run for seven years, they wrote.

During his 13-month trial, Martic, a former policeman and an ardent Serbian nationalist, showed no remorse. He tried to justify the violent actions of the police and paramilitary groups that he directed as the minister of defense and the interior, and eventually as president of the self-styled republic of Krajina. The mini-state lasted from 1991 to 1995, when the Croatian military, backed by American advisors, restored Zagreb's control.

Bakone Moloto from South Africa, who headed the three-judge panel, read out a summary of the lengthy judgment, notable because it also delivered a rebuke of the Serbian leadership in Belgrade.

It listed a dozen Serbian political and military leaders who it said worked in collusion with the Krajina uprising.