The political ramifications of several judicial rulings
Nov. 24.─ In the Balkans the big news is who is out of jail, who is in and who is going to court. All the cases are high-profile and all have political fallout. The most significant was the acquittal on November 16th of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. Croats were ecstatic, Serbs bitter.
Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac were first convicted in 2011 of conspiring, as part of a "joint criminal enterprise", to drive Serbs out of Croatia's Krajina region. When Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s the Serbs, backed by Serbia and the Yugoslav army, carved out their own mini-state in Krajina. But in 1995 the Croatian army took most of it back. Some 200,000 Serbs fled, most never to return. Nobody denies that war crimes took place. But the acquittal of the two generals means that the court believes there was no organised plan for "ethnically cleansing" the Serbs.
The generals returned home to a heroes' welcome. Mr Gotovina may even enter politics. If he does it will be as a man of the right close to the Catholic church. No Croat has until now been convicted by the UN tribunal for actions during the war in Croatia. For Croats the ruling vindicates their struggle against the Serbs as one without original sin.
Serbs greeted the release of the generals with fury. The decision "belittles the Serb victims and makes them worthless," said Ivica Dacic, Serbia's prime minister. Serbs have always believed that the UN tribunal is just an anti-Serb kangaroo court. Liberals have fought tooth and nail to persuade their compatriots otherwise. For them the ruling is a catastrophe. On November 29th the court will rule on the appeal of Ramush Haradinaj, a former prime minister of Kosovo, and two others. They were acquitted in 2008 but an appeal was allowed—in part, said the court, because of "serious witness intimidation". No Serbs expect them to be convicted now.
If the court could not prove a "joint criminal enterprise" in Croatia, how can it prove that one existed in the cases of the two Bosnian Serb leaders on trial, Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic? ...
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