The International Criminal Tribunal on Thursday convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The United Nations judges sentenced Karadzic to 40 years in prison. Karadzic, 70, served as president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic during the massacre.
Eight thousand people were killed in what has been called the worst war crime in Europe since World War II
As he sat down after hearing his sentence, Karadzic slumped slightly in his chair, but showed little emotion. He plans to appeal the convictions.
The U.N. court found Karadzic guilty of genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in Europe's worst mass murder since the Holocaust.
Presiding Judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic was the only person in the Bosnian Serb leadership with the power to halt the genocide, but instead gave an order for prisoners to be transported from one location to another to be killed.
In a carefully planned operation, Serb forces transported Muslim men to sites around the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia and gunned them down before dumping their bodies into mass graves.
Kwon said Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, intended "that every able-bodied Bosnian Muslim male from Srebrenica be killed."
Karadzic was also held criminally responsible for murder, attacking civilians and terror for overseeing the deadly 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, during the war and for taking hostage U.N. peacekeepers.
However, the court acquitted Karadzic in a second genocide charge, for a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces.
Peter Robinson, part of Karadzic's legal team, said he would appeal.
"Dr. Karadzic is disappointed. He's astonished," Robinson told reporters. "He feels the trial chamber took inference instead of evidence in reaching the conclusions that it did."
Karadzic had faced a total of 11 charges and a maximum life sentence, but was given 40 years imprisonment. Karadzic can appeal the ruling.
Prosecutors held Karadzic responsible as a political leader and commander-in-chief of Serb forces in Bosnia, which are blamed for the worst atrocities of the war. The 70-year-old Karadzic had insisted he was innocent and says his wartime actions were intended to protect Serbs.
The trial is hugely significant for the U.N. tribunal and the development of international law. Karadzic is the most senior Bosnian Serb leader to face prosecution at the court housed in a former insurance company headquarters in The Hague.
Karadzic's conviction will most likely strengthen international jurisprudence on the criminal responsibility of political leaders for atrocities committed by forces under their control.
"Victims and their families have waited for over two decades to see Karadzic's day of reckoning," Param-Preet Singh, senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
Note
The July1995 massacre took place over several days after Serbian forces overran Srebrenica, which had been designated as a United Nations “safe haven” under the control of Dutch soldiers during the fighting and ethnic cleansing that marked the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
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