Biljana Plavsic, a convicted war criminal, commented on the Hague tribunal’s second-instance verdict sentencing war criminal Ratko Mladic to life in prison, saying it had nothing to do with the Srebrenica crime.
Plavsic said that she respects him as an exceptional soldier and professional, but also a human, because, as she says, he “protected civilians regardless of their religion and nation”.
“Ratko Mladic has nothing to do with what happened in Srebrenica. It has nothing to do with genocide. Genocide is what happened to Serbs in 1941,” told Plavsic.
Also, she added that she did not deny that a crime happened in Srebrenica, but that it was not genocide.
“There was a war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). And so, if all the world’s leaders came together and asked for the truth in his case, they would have to protect him professionally. He was convicted because he defended the people. He was a soldier, a professional. I was at the front, visited soldiers, injured, maimed people… I have never met such a fighter ” said Plavsic.
According to her, general Mladic did not divide people into Croats, “Muslims”, Serbs, but he thought people were people, regardless of their nation.
She especially emphasized that Mladic had great respect for women. “That is my experience. I appreciate him, among other things, because of that, as a man,” Plavsic stated.
To recall, on June 8th, the Appeals Chamber of the Hague Tribunal confirmed the life sentence of the criminal Mladic on almost all counts of the indictment, including the one for genocide in Srebrenica.
On April 7th, 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) indicted Biljana Plavsic for crimes committed during the aggression against BiH. She surrendered to the court in The Hague on January 10th, 2001, and on October 2nd, 2002, pleaded guilty to one count of indictment – persecution on political, national, and religious grounds.
She was sentenced to 11 years in prison, and on September 14th, 2009, she was granted early release, Klix.ba writes.
E.Dz.
