Serb general to serve 46 years for war crimes

The UN war crimes tribunal found a Bosnian Serb general guilty of genocide yesterday for killing up to 8,000 Muslims at the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in 1995. It was the first genocide conviction in Europe since World War II.

Gen. Radislav Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison.

The court ruled that, even though General Krstic may have received orders from others to carry out mass executions of men and deportations of women and children, he bore responsibility for genocide.

"You were there, General Krstic," said Judge Rodrigues. "You were guilty of the murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims," he said.

"In July 1995, General Krstic, you agreed to evil. This is why the trial chamber convicts you today and sentences you to 46 years in prison."

The sentence was the longest delivered yet by the tribunal in any of the convictions it has handed down for the Balkan wars. But it fell short of the eight consecutive life sentences sought by the prosecution.

Krstic had denied responsibility, saying his superior officer, Gen. Ratko Mladic, had given the orders. But the tribunal ruled that Krstic, the most senior officer brought to trial so far, knew massacres were taking place. General Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, then the Bosnian Serb political leader, have been indicted but remain at large.

The Srebrenica killings were Europe's worst civilian massacre since the persecution of Jews during World War II. It was the first time the UN tribunal has ruled that genocide was committed in the Bosnian war.

The court ruled that the Serbian forces killed up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims of fighting age after expelling all the women, children, and old people from Srebrenica.

They must have known that the combined action of killing and expulsion would lead to the destruction of the Muslim population, and therefore constituted genocide, the judgment said.

The tribunal's statutes define genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Those acts include murder, inflicting living conditions designed to eliminate a group, preventing births, or transferring children from one group to another.

The Yugoslav court was established in 1993 to punish those responsible for atrocities during the breakup of Yugoslavia that began in 1991.

The Krstic trial began in March 2000, and summations were heard last June.