Bosnia's iron lady jailed for 11 years

By STEPHEN CASTLE in THE HAGUE

Bosnia's "iron lady", former President Biljana Plavsic, was yesterday sentenced to 11 years in jail after admitting her role in the country's savage ethnic cleansing of the 1990s and expressing remorse.

The most senior official from ex-Yugoslavia to plead guilty to war crimes charges, Plavsic was given a relatively lenient sentence after the court heard testimony that she later helped moves to peace.

Nevertheless, presiding judge Richard May told the United Nations tribunal in The Hague that Plavsic's crimes "were of the utmost gravity", and that the Bosnian Serb campaign of persecution against Muslims and Croats "mistreated, raped, tortured and killed".

Dressed in a smart suit, Plavsic, 72, showed no emotion as sentence was passed yesterday afternoon.

At the time of the 1992-95 Bosnian war Plavsic was second only to wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who remains at large. In 1992 she made her most infamous political gesture by kissing the notorious Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan. He nicknamed her "the Serbian empress".

In January 2001 Plavsic surrendered to the authorities in The Hague, saying she wanted to prove her innocence. But last year she changed her plea to guilty on one count of persecution, a crime against humanity. In return the prosecution dropped all other charges against her, including the most serious count of genocide.

While her admission of guilt is seen as an important step towards reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia, her sentence raises questions about the consistency of the punishments handed down by the tribunal.

The former Bosnian Serb military commander General Radislav Krstic is serving a 46-year sentence after being convicted of genocide.

Plavsic faced a maximum of 25 years yesterday. The prosecution had asked for 15 to 25 years and defence lawyers for eight years.

One important factor influencing the judgment was undoubtedly the evidence of the former United States Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, who outlined Plavsic's role in winning support for the peace agreement negotiated in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio.

Although Plavsic said nothing after the sentence was pronounced, she had expressed a sense of fatalism ahead of the judgement.

"This is nothing compared to what misery I have seen in my life. This is the end of a road which I started a long time ago," she said.




- INDEPENDENT