VZCZCXRO2676
PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA
RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHBW #0477/01 1021403
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 121403Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY BELGRADE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0605
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 000477 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
SENSITIVE 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PHUM KJUS PGOV PREL SR
SUBJECT:  SERBIAN COURT CONVICTS FOUR FOR SREBRENICA-RELATED WAR 
CRIMES 
 
 
¶1.  (sbu)  Summary:  On April 10, the Belgrade Special War Crimes 
Court handed down convictions to four former members of the 
"Scorpions" paramilitary unit for their roles in the execution of 
Muslim civilians in Trnovo, Bosnia, on July 17, 1995.  Chief war 
crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said he was partially pleased 
with the verdict, which he said proved the commission of war crimes 
in Srebrenica.  Victims' families, local war crimes NGO's, and even 
the prosecutor and President Tadic, though, voiced disappointment 
over, inter alia, the leniency of the sentencing given the 
compelling, graphic visual evidence of the crimes (a videotape 
prominently aired in 2005).  While it is significant that a Serbian 
court has once again convicted Serbs on war crimes charges, much 
more needs to be done for Serbia to deal fully with the legacy of 
the crimes of the 1990's.  End summary. 
 
¶2.  (sbu)  On April 10, the Belgrade special court for war crimes 
handed down convictions to four members of a paramilitary unit known 
as the "Scorpions" for their role in the execution-style slaying of 
bound Muslim civilians in Trnovo, Bosnia, on July 17, 1995.  The 
genesis of the conviction was a graphic video taken by Scorpion 
members of the executions that clearly showed the identity of the 
perpetrators and the incontrovertible inhumanity of their actions. 
The video was played fairly widely on Serbian television in July 
2005, prompting the government to arrest five men and begin a court 
case against them.  The two ringleaders of the group in the video, 
Scorpion commander Slobodan "Boca" Medic and Branislav Medic, each 
received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison 
(maximum sentencing being defined as the maximum possible at the 
time the crimes were committed - Serbia's criminal code did not 
increase maximum sentencing to 40 years until 2002, well after these 
crimes were committed).  Others involved in the crime were given 
reduced sentences of 13 and five years, while one defendant, 
Aleksander Vukov, was actually acquitted on the grounds that the 
trial chamber found no evidence to support the claim (he was not 
shown on the video, but the prosecution claims to have eyewitnesses 
putting him in the unit's command bunker in the hills surrounding 
the "killing field."). 
 
¶3.  (sbu)  Serbia's chief war crimes prosecutor, Vladimir Vukcevic, 
told local media he was "partially satisfied" by the result of the 
trial, noting that it represented an acknowledgement in Serbia that 
war crimes were committed in Srebrenica.  He expressed 
disappointment, though, at the relative leniency of some of the 
sentences, and vowed to appeal the cases of those who received less 
than the maximum sentence.  He also promised to continue the 
prosecution of the case, which included tracking down another three 
co-defendants currently believed to be living abroad (a ninth 
co-defendant, Slobodan Davidovic, was convicted in Zagreb in 
December, 2005 and is serving a 15-year sentence in Croatia). 
President Tadic also voiced disappointment over the sentencing, 
noting that the maximum sentences should have been handed down 
across the board. 
 
¶4.  (sbu)  Critics of the court and the process have been even more 
vocal.  The families of the victims, on site for the verdict and the 
sentencing, condemned the leniency of the verdicts, claiming that no 
punishment would be sufficient for the crimes committed.  The NGO 
community was similarly incensed.  Natasa Kandic, internationally 
respected director of the Humanitarian Law Center, a Belgrade-based 
war crimes watchdog organization, decried not so much the sentencing 
as what she saw as a deliberate attempt to de-link the actions of 
the Scorpions from support she says the unit received both from the 
Serbian armed forces (VJ) and the State Security service (DB).  She 
has complained that the investigation did not continue higher up the 
chain of command (i.e., past Medic to Belgrade) from whence she says 
the instructions ultimately came.  She cites as evidence of the 
Scorpions' ties to the VJ, inter alia, their military insignia and 
the fact that their official correspondence was directed to a VJ 
postal address (the Serbian equivalent of an APO/FPO address).  Her 
criticisms are more deeply felt following the ICJ ruling in the 
Bosnia v. FRY case, which many civil society leaders in Serbia 
thought dealt a grave injustice by, essentially, absolving 
Belgrade's leadership of complicity and support for ethnic cleansing 
in Bosnia.  Moreover, a lawyer for the local Helsinki Committee who 
observed the trial noted that the judge in the case used her bench 
for political grandstanding, categorizing the conflicts as, e.g., 
"the civil war in Bosnia" and stating that "Serbia was not at war" - 
both common Milosevic-era shibboleths. 
 
¶5.  (sbu)  Ironically - or perhaps pointedly - on the same day, 
local media also reported that a first-instance conviction of Sasa 
Radak for war crimes in Ovcara (near Vukovar, Croatia) had been 
overturned by the Serbian Supreme Court and returned for retrial. 
It was the second Ovcara-related case overturned by the Supreme 
Court.  The third, considered to be minor since it involved only one 
ailing defendant, was upheld in the second instance and is now in 
full legal force. Aside from that conviction, the only other 
prosecution from the War Crimes Court that has been upheld is the 
conviction of Anton Lekaj, an ethnic Albanian convicted of war 
crimes against Serbs.  Two other domestic war crimes cases 
overturned and later upheld by the Supreme Court - Podujevo and 
 
BELGRADE 00000477  002 OF 002 
 
 
Sjeverin - were prosecuted in the District Court vice the War Crimes 
Court. 
 
¶6.  (sbu)  Comment:  We should not underestimate the significance of 
a Serbian court again convicting Serbs on charges of war crimes. 
This decision follows other first-instance convictions of Serbs in 
the Ovcara, Podujevo, and Sjeverin cases.  While the sentences might 
seem lenient by American standards, three of the defendants in the 
Scorpions case received the harshest sentence available under 
Serbian law.  Moreover, this conviction establishes for the first 
time in a Serbian court that Serbians carried out war crimes against 
civilians of Srebrenica.  This is important, given that polls 
regularly show that only one-third of Serbians believe that Serb 
forces killed large numbers of Muslim prisoners at Srebrenica -- 
despite the airing of the Scorpions videotape. 
 
¶7.  (sbu)  While an important step forward, much more remains to be 
done for Serbia to deal fully with the legacy of the crimes of the 
1990's.  Most of the progress accomplished so far has been due to 
the efforts of the prosecutors, investigators, and judges attached 
to the Special War Crimes Court itself.  The appeals court -- in 
this case the Serbian Supreme Court -- has been generally 
unreceptive to the first-instance convictions.  In every significant 
first-instance war crimes conviction so far, the Supreme Court has 
overturned the conviction upon first review (although it later 
upheld at least two convictions following re-trials).  The laxity of 
the Serbian appeals process (even the most minute technical errors 
can be cause for an overturning, if a judge so chooses, even if they 
have no bearing on the outcome of the case), coupled with a 
widespread belief that the Supreme Court is still packed with 
Milosevite judges, will complicate the efforts of those Serbs 
committed to a vigorous pursuit of justice for the victims of 
Serb-instigated ethnic cleansing in the 1990's. 
POLT