A UN WAR CRIMES tribunal yesterday sentenced a Croat who confessed to taking part in a Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) massacre of over 1,200 unarmed Muslims to 10 years in jail.
Drazen Erdemovic (25) is the first person to be sentenced by the Hague based UN criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the first sentenced by an international war crimes tribunal since the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials after the second World War.
Charged with crimes against humanity, he pleaded guilty in May to being one of the BSA's execution squad that carried out the killings after Serbs overran the UN "safe haven" in July 1995.
In passing sentence, Judge Claude Jorda of France, presiding, said the three judge panel had noted the accused's age, his low military rank, his remorse and his "full and unconditional" co operation with prosecutors.
The 10 year term was the maximum demanded by prosecutors, who had asked for leniency after the accused had confessed, shown remorse and provided valuable information about war crimes. The sentence was backdated to include Erdemovic's eight months in tribunal custody.
Mr Jovan Babic, Erdemovic's lawyer, said he would appeal the sentence. He had argued that Erdemovic should be acquitted because he had been forced to take part in the summary execution of Muslims under threat of death.
A tribunal spokesman said it could take several weeks to decide where Erdemovic would serve his sentence, with no prospect of parole, but the likeliest options appeared to be Italy, Finland or Norway.
Erdemovic was the first Bosnian Serb military insider to publicly testify about events at Srebrenica. He was arrested in Belgrade in March after telling a French newspaper that he had personally killed 70 Muslims during the mass execution.
"His testimony exposed the lies of Bosnian Serb political and military leaders that the killings of civilians from Srebrenica was nothing but Muslim propaganda," the prosecutor, Mr Mark Harmon, said during pre sentencing hearings on November 20th.
In his guilty plea, Erdemovic said Muslims were bussed to Branjevo farm at Pilica, near Zvornik and some 70 km north of Srebrenica, where they were shot in groups of 10.
Prosecutors admit that Erdemovic would have remained a "faceless and nameless executioner" and the tribunal may never have unveiled the Pilica massacre which it said was "amongst the largest crimes committed during the tragic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina" - if Erdemovic himself had not spoken out.