Karadzic, Tell Us What Happened in Bosnia

by Daniel J Gerstle

Published November 03, 2009 @ 11:53AM PT

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Dear Rado, Would you stop shying away from your war crimes trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia? Just sit down and tell us what happened. The evidence against you is so overwhelming, much of it in your own words, that you're going to be in prison for the rest of your life no matter what you say in your defense. There is nothing left to do but at least clear up for surviving relatives some fuzzy details, many of which aren't going to make you appear any more guilty. In fact, if you could map out where the rest of the missing might be buried, that could earn you some additional cable channels.

Lead Prosecutor Alan Tieger began your trial for war crimes this week by quoting you on tape from 1991. You said: "[Sarajevo] will be a black caldron where 300,000 Muslims will die. They will disappear. That people will disappear from the face of the earth." There were also times when you made similar statements in public, in the Bosnian state government, and some of it on video. You were the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serb separatist community. You not only had command control, along with General Ratko Mladic, over tens of thousands of troops conquering territory, but also over detention facilities. Srebrenica and Zepa were best known. But there is plenty of evidence on Foca, Visegrad, Zvornik, Prijedor, Sarajevo, and on and on.

To fight for independence is one thing, but to expel by gunpoint hundreds of thousands of innocent people who could have remained as your army pushed through was entirely unnecessary. Even the paramilitaries like those led by Arkan, Bokan, and Seselj, and the brutes who ran rape camps, they looked up to you. If you hadn't ordered them to murder civilians or rape they would have listened if you told them not to. And don't play the Western media bias angle. Many of us speak Serbo-Croatian. We've heard what you said, read what you've written, and spoken to many witnesses. So please, don't embarrass yourself trying to build your defense after doing so little to prepare beforehand. Just help us clear up the remaining mysteries for the surviving family members of those who were killed under your watch. Right no that's the only thing you can do to help Serbs in Bosnia.

[Photo: Sarajavo's Bascarsija Square, Bosnia, Luigi Guarino.]