NETHERLANDS: Biljana Plavsic, the first former president convicted of war crimes, yesterday begged the world for forgiveness for unleashing Bosnia's ethnic cleansing.
"Why did I not see the truth earlier?" she said at her sentencing hearing at the The Hague.
Plavsic (72), the former deputy to the Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, currently on the run and charged with war crimes, tried to explain why she had joined in with such horror.
"The answer is I believe fear, a blinding fear that led to obsession especially for those of us for whom World War Two was living memory that Serbs would never allow themselves to become victims," she said.
A former biology professor, Plavsic was nicknamed the Iron Lady during the war years, and became famous for justifying the murder of Muslims on the grounds that they were biologically inferior to Serbs.
Looking sombre in the dock, wearing a knitted jacket with black collar and flanked by a blue-uniformed female UN guard, Plavsic delivered a remarkable Mea Culpa.
"At the time I convinced myself that this is a matter of survival and self-defence, but the explanation of survival and self-defence offers no justification, " she said . "Many thousands of innocent people were victims of an organised effort to remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from territory claimed by Serbs."
Earlier in the day, history of a different kind was made when former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the most senior American official ever to testify at the war crimes tribunal.
Ms Albright recalled the horrors of ethnic cleansing, rapes, murders and detention camps set up by the Serbs. "It was unimaginable that these things could be going on," she told Court Number One in The Hague. "It seemed to be done in a deliberate way, not some accident of a drunken soldier." Czech-born Ms Albright became one of the key figures pushing the formation of the war crimes court nine years ago. She said she was motivated by the horror she saw.
"It became very evident, to anyone who was watching what was going on, that it was reminiscent of pictures that reminded one of World War Two," said Ms Albright.
"We saw pictures of people being taken into what could only be labelled as concentration camps."
After the Bosnian war, Plavsic performed an abrupt U-turn, turning against the other Serb hardliners and embracing the West's Dayton peace plan. Two months ago she pleaded guilty in a deal whereby the prosecution dropped seven more charges, including one of genocide. And yesterday she got her reward, as international officials lined up to praise her.
Ms Albright was circumspect, saying that although Plavsic co-operated, she could not forget the earlier Iron Lady incarnation: "Obviously she was involved in horrendous things," said Ms Albright. "I found her a very conflicted individual."
The hearing continues today, with Plavsic facing a maximum of life imprisonment.