Erstellt am: 6. 9. 2011 - 15:20 Uhr

The Den Haag-Belgrade Connection

Reality Check: How atrocities in the Balkan killing fields were planned in Belgrade. A verdict in the trial of Momcilo Perisic.

Momcilo Perisic was the most senior Yugoslav army officer to be charged with war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, until the arrest recently of Serb commander Ratko Mladic. Nonetheless the verdict handed down today is highly significant in closing certain bloody chapters of the Balkan Wars, that includes the four year siege and shelling of Sarajevo and the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

APA

General Momcilo Perisic was the former Chief of General Staff of the Yugoslav Army. Basically he was number 2 to Mladic. Often in war crimes trials the defence tries to put serious wong-doings down to either a few rogue soldiers or the so-called fog of war. But what this trial showed was that Perisic effectively gave the green light from Belgrade for the soldiers under his command to commit war crimes without impunity around say the foothills of Sarajevo. In other words for the first time, it has been possible to draw a direct link between the decisions taken by those in command and the atrocities carried out on the killing fields. It was a link that prosecutors had been trying to prove during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic but because of his untimely death in custody they were unable to do so. Therefore we now have an insight into how these war crimes were planned in Belgrade and how those orders were sent down the chain of command to the killing squads on the ground.

The opening statement from the prosecutors laid out their case: “He consistently failed in his duty to investigate and punish war crimes committed by his officers .... of which he was fully aware. He created an environment of impunity wherein his subordinates were encouraged and did persist to commit crimes, knowing there would be no consequences.”

A case that was proven in the verdict and the sentence handed down today by the Hague tribunal. Momcilo Perisic will spend the next 27 years of his life in prison.

Hear Mark Lowen’s report from Belgrade.

Also on today’s Reality Check…He’s been one of Austria’s most influential politicians of the past 20 years- Wolfgang Schüssel. How does his stepping down affect the fortunes of the ÖVP? And how is the whole Telekom affair clouding people’s views of Austrian politics in general? Political analyst Anneliese Rohrer puts all of the current developments into perspective.

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