WAR CRIMINAL'S 10 YEAR SENTENCE

ANGERS JUDGE

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Last updated: Apr.01.2004.                                               Language options: bosnian / english

From Wire Reports
Originally published March 31, 2004

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Miroslav Deronjic, a confessed Bosnian Serb war criminal and an important prosecution witness in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague, received a modest 10-year sentence yesterday. The sentence, suggested by the prosecution and accepted by two judges, seemed so light that it openly angered the leading judge in the case. 

Deronjic, 49, once a high-ranking Bosnian Serb official, described in court how arms, advice and plans flowed from Belgrade in the early 1990s while Serbian Serbs and Bosnian Serbs prepared for war. He spoke with eloquence and detail of the strategy to drive Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) from lands wanted for Serbs. He took responsibility for ordering the burning and razing of Glogova, a Muslim village where at least 64 people were killed. 

For Deronjic, the guilty plea and the evidence he subsequently provided in five different trials appear to have paid off. 

But Judge Wolfgang Schomburg, in a strongly worded dissent, wrote that Deronjic's 10-year sentence was not proportional to the "heinous and long-planned crimes," and violated the spirit and the mandate of the tribunal. The crimes deserved a sentence of "no less than 20 years," he wrote. 

The judge's reaction is the latest example of the discomfort felt by a number of court officials since the tribunal has embarked on its new strategy to encourage plea bargaining as a way to speed up cases and clear its backlog. 

The tribunal is under intense pressure, including from Washington, to prepare itself for closing down, which means ending all investigations this year and completing trials by 2008. 

But several judges have complained that the haste and the recent series of plea bargains are leading to sloppy work and to sentences that are too lenient. 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands - (AP) -- A former Bosnian Serb politician who was a star witness against Slobodan Milosevic and other top suspects at the U.N. war crimes tribunal was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his own war crimes Tuesday.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Miroslav Deronjic, 49, confessed to a single charge of persecution for ordering the destruction of the Bosniak village of Glogova in Bosnia on May 9, 1992, killing 65 civilians.

Reading a summary of the judgment, presiding Judge Wolfgang Schomburg said the tribunal sought to ''balance the extreme gravity of the crimes against his contribution to coming closer to the truth'' about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

In exchange for his plea and testimony against Milosevic and others, which described firsthand how the process of 'ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks took place in Bosnia, prosecutors dropped five other charges against Deronjic and recommended a 10-year prison sentence.

Deronjic, the top wartime authority in the eastern Bosnian city of Bratunac, admitted giving the order ''to attack the undefended and disarmed village of Glogova, burn it down, and forcibly displace its Bosnian Muslim residents, taking into account the substantial likelihood that some of them would be killed,'' Schomburg said.

Deronjic then reported back to the parliament of the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic, where he was applauded by the Bosnian Serbs' top political leader Radovan Karadzic and top general Ratko Mladic.

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Project Famous Bosniaks / 2003 /