Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic sits in the courtroom for the reading of his verdict at the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, on March 24, 2016/AFP
THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Mar 24 – UN war crimes judges on Thursday found former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic guilty of genocide and sentenced him to 40 years in jail over the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.
The court said Karadzic, the most high-profile figure convicted over the wars that tore Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s, bore criminal responsibility for murder and persecution in the Bosnian conflict.
Judge O-Gon Kwon said the court in The Hague found Karadzic guilty of genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and nine other charges of murder, persecution, and hostage-taking.
But in what will be a blow to thousands of victims, the court said it did not have enough evidence to prove “beyond reasonable doubt” that genocide had been committed in seven Bosnian towns and villages over two decades ago.
It marks the end of a marathon trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for Karadzic’s role during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war that claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced 2.2 million others.
The 70-year-old listened stony-faced as Kwon said it was clear Karadzic bore “individual criminal responsibility” for murder, persecution as well as the hostage-taking of UN peacekeepers.
Karadzic “was at the apex of political, governmental and military structures” of the Bosnian Serb leadership and “at the forefront of developing and promoting its ideologies,” Kwon said.
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