Several officials from Republika Srpska (RS) spoke out after the death of Hague convict Radoslav Brdjanin with statements glorifying his deed or diminishing the importance of the verdict of the Hague Tribunal, by which he was sentenced to 30 years for war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), which did not surprise the victims who express the need for social catharsis and repentance.
At the beginning of the month, the International Mechanism for Criminal Courts (IMCM) released on early release Radoslav Brdjanin, the former political leader of the Autonomous Region of Krajina (ARK), who was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against humanity. He died last week in the Banja Luka clinical center, which was followed by reactions from the public, primarily from RS officials.
Milorad Dodik, member of the BiH Presidency and president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), praised Brdjanin’s merits on his Twitter profile and expressed his condolences for his death.
Milorad Kojic, Director of the Center for Research of War, War Crimes and Search for Missing Persons of the RS, during a guest appearance on the morning program of the Radio Television of the RS (RTRS), downplayed the severity of the verdict by which the Hague Tribunal convicted Brdjanin, stating that he was convicted for a verbal offense, and not for crimes against humanity.
Sadmir Alibegovic spent almost 200 days in the war camps in Sanski Most, Lusci-Palanka, and Manjaca, where he was abused, and during the war, his father, brother, and numerous members of his immediate family were killed. He says to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN BiH) that he is not surprised by such statements, given that there have been cases of hiding war criminals and the location of mass graves.
“Their attitude is that he was a hero for them and for us… we know what he was. It is very difficult for us, we would like the situation to be different – to experience that catharsis once, to see how repentance is expressed,“ says Alibegovic, president of the Association of Detention Center Campers of the Una-Sana Canton (USC), “Dr. Irfan Ljubijankic“.
Brdjanin is just one of a number of convicted war criminals who are being glorified, according to Murat Tahirovic, president of the Association of Genocide Victims and Witnesses.
“We are still in those war years and, unfortunately, we aretrapped in the period 92-95, where the perpetrators of war crimes were somehow rewarded, praised for the crimes they committed. No one prevented them then, moreover, as I said – they were rewarded. And it remains so to this day,” he noted.m, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
