Serbs complain of unfair treatment after Karadzic verdict

By Aleksandar Vasovic and Maja Zuvela

BELGRADE/SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Serbs are unfairly bearing the brunt of war crimes verdicts, the Belgrade government said on Friday, after a UN tribunal found former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic guilty of genocide.

The Hague tribunal on Thursday found Karadzic, the former president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb Republic, guilty of 10 of 11 charges stemming from the 1992-95 Bosnian war, including genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison but will appeal.

Many Serbs, both in Serbia and Bosnia, view the war crimes tribunal as a pro-Western tool, believe that Karadzic is innocent and that his conviction is an injustice to all Serbs.

The government in Belgrade is committed to pro-Western policies and respect for the UN tribunal, but it is keen to prevent the Karadzic affair from strengthening radical nationalist parties in parliamentary elections scheduled for April 24.

“Any politicization and any accusation of collective guilt towards certain nations for crimes committed by people with first and last names is not allowed,” the government said in a statement read by Justice Minister Nikola Selakovic after a special cabinet dedicated to the Karadzic verdict.

“The Serbian government believes that justice, which consists of punishing members of one nation for crimes committed by all, is in fact selective,” he said, adding that all sides committed atrocities during the wars of the 1990s that tore apart Yugoslavia.

The government of the Bosnian Serb Republic, which Karadzic helped found, also criticized the tribunal’s verdict, saying it “does not contribute to reconciliation and building trust between the peoples” of the former Yugoslavia.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, a former nationalist who now hopes to lead his country into the European Union, is expected to be re-elected next month, but small radical nationalist groups are enjoying a surge in popularity, rallying voters tired of tough economic reforms and high unemployment.

Two nationalist groups hope to obtain more than 5 percent of the vote, the threshold for entering Parliament.

“The Karadzic verdict may contribute to nationalism (in Serbia), especially in the run-up to the elections, because the Hague tribunal failed to present itself here as a legal institution. It had the approach of a political body,” said Nebojsa Spaic, a Belgrade-based journalist and media consultant.

KARADZIC POSTER

The Serbian tabloid Informer plans to distribute a poster of Karadzic in its Saturday edition, its editor-in-chief said on his Twitter account. The poster shows a Karadzic in uniform with the slogan “Serbia remembers”.

Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, a radical nationalist party, protested against the EU and NATO on Thursday at a rally attended by 5,000 supporters and said the verdict against Karadzic was “a sentence against “the whole Serbian nation”.

The Serbs also noted that Thursday marked the anniversary of the launch of NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia in 1999.

“The Hague tribunal deliberately chose the anniversary of the 1999 assassination attempt to sentence Karadzic. They thought it would be a humiliation for the Serbs, but they were wrong. It will make us even more provocative,” Ana Todorovic, 23, a student and supporter of the radicals, said at the rally.

Seselj, Vucic’s former mentor, is running in the parliamentary elections pending the UN tribunal’s verdict on March 31 on his own role in the wars of the 1990s.

If he is convicted and sentenced to prison, it would create a dilemma for Vucic, who would be forced to put him on a plane to The Hague.

(Additional reporting by Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade and Gordana Katana in Banja Luka; Writing by Adrian Croft; editing by Gareth Jones)