BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA: Radomir Stankovic sentenced to 16 years by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia's war crimes court on Tuesday (November 14) sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier to 16 years in prison for the serial rape, enslavement and torture of civilians in the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Radovan Stankovic was the first defendant sent from the United Nations war crimes court to Bosnia for a local trial. He was found guilty of running a brutal detention camp near the eastern town of Foca and of encouraging and assisting in the capture, torture, rape and killing of non-Serb civilians. Presiding judge, Davorin Jukic told the court that nine women were kept in a detention centre where nine women were kept, most of them minors. Jukic said two of the girls were 12 years old, and one of them is still missing. Stankovic was found to have repeatedly raped, tortured and beaten the two girls for months, Jukic said. He offered other girls to Bosnian Serb soldiers, who raped and humiliated them. Stankovic was not present during the ruling, and had been removed from court for most of the proceedings because of his improper behaviour and continued insults to the court. The court heard testimonies from 14 protected witnesses. Two rape victims faced Stankovic in court and identified him as the person in charge of the infamous Karaman House detention centre, the man who raped girls and gave them to other soldiers. Bakira Hasecic the president of the Women-Victims of War association, condemned the sentence. "We expected him to be sentenced to life imprisonment or at least to 30 - 40 years," she said after the ruling. "It is obvious that the court wants to amnesty war criminals and to discourage women who were raped and sexually abused from testifying. But we won't be stopped. We'll keep telling the truth as long as we live. Our association will also appeal this verdict, asking for life imprisonment, because he destroyed so many lives of young girls, let alone those who were murdered," she added. Hasecic is herself a victim of wartime rape. The town of Foca in eastern Bosnia has become a byword for the use of rape as an instrument of war in the conflict. After Bosnian Serb forces took control of the town, they detained thousands of Muslim and Croat civilians, locking up women and even pre-teen girls in impromptu detention centres where they were beaten and raped for months. The detainees also had to cook and clean for the soldiers. The Hague court has already convicted three former Bosnian Serb commanders for war crimes in Foca. It transferred Stankovic to Bosnia last year, the first of nine Bosnian Serb war crimes suspects sent over the past year under its new strategy of transferring some mid- and low-ranking cases to national courts and focusing on major suspects. The court is under pressure to close in 2010.

ITN Source | November 15, 2006

Tags:. .destroyed. .sexually. .identified. .gave. .defendant