Free Him, Unless Concrete
Evidence is Found, Says IFOR
(SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina—AP) The NATO-led force urged the Bosnian government Thursday to release a Serb officer unless it has "concrete evidence" the U.N. war crimes tribunal has not seen. Col. Aleksa Krsmanovic was freed by the tribunal in the Netherlands for lack of evidence, then arrested when he returned to Sarajevo on Wednesday night. "We are now determining whether he is guilty of the (war) crimes," Judge Izet Bazdarevic of the Sarajevo High Court said Thursday.The arrest highlighted a problem that has plagued the U.S.-brokered Bosnian peace accord from the start—the refusal of the hostile parties to release all their prisoners of war. The international Red Cross says 88 prisoners remain held, 78 of them accused of war crimes. Some are unlikely to be indicted by the international tribunal in The Hague, sources say. The United States and the European Union have threatened to withhold reconstruction money from Bosnia unless all the prisoners are freed.
Holding Colonel may Violate Rome Agreement
The Bosnian government insists it has the right to conduct its own war crimes trials, even in cases where the international tribune determines there is not enough evidence. Maj. Simon Haselock, a NATO spokesman, suggested the government was violating an agreement it signed in Rome in February to detain people only after arrest warrants had been issued by The Hague. "It seems to us that the International War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia had released him (Krsmanovic) because they felt that there was insufficient evidence to indict him," Haselock said."Therefore, unless there is something substantive yet to be produced, we would urge the Bosnian government to act in the spirit of the rules of the road agreed in Rome." Krsmanovic and Gen. Djordje Djukic were arrested by government soldiers in January after making a wrong turn into a Muslim-held suburb of Sarajevo. Bosnian Serbs, angered at the arrest of two officers who had not been indicted in The Hague, boycotted meetings with NATO. It was the most serious episode in NATO’s effort to reconcile the hostile parties.
In mid-February, the officers were sent to The Hague, where the tribunal decided to open a case against Djukic, but not Krsmanovic. He returned to Sarajevo on a plane chartered by the tribunal and was arrested at the airport late Wednesday. U.N. international police witnessed his arrest and transfer to the central prison in Sarajevo.
Prosecutors at The Hague have indicted 57 suspects, including Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief, Gen. Ratko Mladic. All but 11 are Bosnian Serbs.
Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
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