UN court upholds life sentence for ex-Serb officer over genocide
The UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has upheld a life sentence against a former Bosnian Serb military officer for his involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
“The appeals chamber affirms [Zdravko] Tolimir’s sentence to life in prison,” Judge Theodor Meron said at a hearing before the Hague-based tribunal on Wednesday.
Tolimir was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2012, after he was found guilty on six counts, including genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder, extermination, persecution on ethnic grounds and forced transfer.
Judges upheld the vast majority of Tolimir’s conviction counts during the Wednesday hearing. However, they overturned some elements of the former general’s conviction concerning the forcible transfer of Muslims from the Bosnian town of Žepa as well as extermination linked to specific small-scale killings.
The ex-officer was the head of the Bosnian Serb military intelligence and reported directly to Ratko Mladić, a former Bosnian Serb army chief, who also remains on trial in The Hague over war crimes.
Judges described Tolimir as Mladić’s “eyes and ears,” particularly at the 1995 massacre.
The eastern town of Srebrenica was a UN-protected area that was besieged by the Serb forces throughout the 1992-95 war for Serb domination in Bosnia.
However, the UN troops offered no resistance when the Serbs overran the majority Muslim town on July 11, 1995, rounding up Srebrenica’s Muslims and killing over 8,000 men and boys in a few days.
The killings were later labeled as genocide by the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
SSM/HSN/SS
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