The crimes of a self-confessed murderer who called himself the "Serb Adolf Hitler" were abhorrent but were not genocide, appeal judges at the UN war crimes tribunal ruled yesterday, upholding a judgment.
A panel of five judges backed the court's previous ruling that killings in Bosnia by Goran Jelisic (33) did not constitute genocide, the most serious of four types of war crime. They also upheld his 40-year prison sentence.
Judges said the previous ruling was in error regarding the proof required for establishing genocide, but decided not to call a new trial for practical reasons.
"Resources are limited in terms of manpower and the uncertain longevity of the tribunal," the judgment said. "It is not appropriate that the case be remitted for further proceedings," said Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen, presiding
A former farm mechanic who bragged that he liked to kill Muslims before breakfast, Jelisic had pleaded guilty to other war crimes charges, but denied genocide. He had appealed the 40-year sentence handed down in 1999, the most severe punishment by the court at that time. Prosecutors had also appealed the rejection of the genocide charges.
Jelisic pleaded guilty to participating in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign when he worked at the Serb-run Luka prison camp near Brcko, in northern Bosnia, in the spring of 1992. He pleaded guilty to 31 counts of war crimes, admitting 12 named murders of Bosnian Muslims and Croats and serious attacks on at least four people. But he denied genocide.
During the one-year trial, the court heard how Jelisic introduced himself to detainees as Adolf. During a two-week killing spree in May 1992 he selected detainees almost every day for interrogation and subsequent execution.
In the October 1999 judgment the presiding judge told Jelistic: "The crimes you have committed shock the conscience of mankind."
The court's first judgment on genocide said the prosecution had not proved that Jelisic's acts constituted this crime. The main sticking point was how to prove intention.
Of the 67 people currently indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 12 are charged with genocide, but none has yet been convicted. They include the tribunal's principal fugitive suspects, the wartime leader Mr Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, Gen Ratko Mladic.