UN to hear genocide claim

International Court of Justice to consider Croatia’s charges against Serbia over 1992-1995 war

Residents are seen sitting in a shelter in Karlovac, some 50 km south of Zagreb, Croatia, in this file photo taken on September 10, 1993. The UN’s highest court said it would hear a Croat genocide claim against Serbia.

By Mariette le Roux - Agence France-Presse

THE HAGUE - The Unite Nations' highest court will hear a genocide claim lodged against Serbia by neighboring Croatia for alleged ethnic cleansing committed during the Croatian war of the early 1990s, judges ruled yesterday.

A panel of 17 judges dismissed a Serbian challenge to the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) competence to hear Croatia's complaint, a date for which will now be set and may take years to reach finality.

«The court... by 10 votes to seven finds that... the court has the jurisdiction to entertain the application by the Republic of Croatia,» said presiding judge Rosalyn Higgins in The Hague.

The ruling paves the way for only the second genocide case to be brought before the ICJ, Serbia also having been the subject of the previous claim filed by Bosnia.

Croatia lodged a complaint against Serbia, then known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), with the ICJ in 1999, claiming «a form of genocide which resulted in large numbers of Croatian citizens being displaced, killed, tortured, or illegally detained as well as extensive property destruction.»

But Serbia argued before the court in May that it had no jurisdiction to hear the case over alleged crimes committed during the 1991-95 Croatian war that claimed some 20,000 lives.

Serbia contended the FRY had not been a member of the UN nor a party to its convention on the prevention of genocide on the date Croatia's complaint was filed.

And it said the majority of the crimes outlined in the complaint were committed before the current Serbian republic was formed.

The judges found, however, that the FRY, Serbia in effect, had voluntarily assumed the rights and obligations of its pre-disintegration predecessor, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), including its accession to international treaties like the genocide convention.

«The FRY would be bound by the obligations of a party in respect of all the multilateral conventions to which the SFRY had been a party at the time of its dissolution,» the court said.

Croatia's core complaint could not be heard before a decision had been made on Belgrade's objection to the court's jurisdiction.

Last year, the ICJ cleared Belgrade of genocide in Bosnia during the breakup of the former Yugoslav federation.

It judged the 1995 massacre of thousands of men and boys at Srebrenica in Bosnia to have been an act of genocide, without attributing direct responsibility to Serbia.

In its application, Croatia claimed that Serbia continued to violate the genocide convention by «failing to punish those responsible, by not revealing information on missing persons and by not returning cultural property taken from Croatia during its occupation.» On top of punishment for those responsible, Croatia seeks reparations and an order for the recovery of cultural treasures it claims were pillaged during the war.

The charges against Belgrade would have been strengthened in both cases by a judgment against former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, but he died in March 2006 shortly before the conclusion of his war crimes trial.

Ivan Simonovic, the lead Croatian lawyer on the case, said he was «very satisfied» with the most recent judgment, which he expected to add to pressure on Serbia to speed up its processes of bringing war criminals to book, finding missing persons and returning cultural treasures.

«We are not launching these proceedings to live in the past but to build healthy foundations for the sustainable future of the region,» he said.

A hearing of the case should also bring to light information lost with Milosevic's death, said Simonovic. He expected the case to be heard in about three years' time.

ZAGREB (AFP) - Some 20,000 Croatians gathered yesterday in Vukovar to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the town's fall to Serb forces, the bloodiest episode of Croatia's independence war, national radio reported.

The mourners gathered at the eastern town's hospital, from where some 400 wounded Croats and other non-Serbs were evacuated by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in 1991. At the time, soldiers bussed 264 evacuees to a secluded farm a few kilometers away, where they were beaten, killed and buried in mass graves. The mourners, including President Stipe Mesic and Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, marched through the town before laying wreaths and lighting candles for those killed during a three-month siege by the JNA and rebel Serbs.

«If there was no heroic defense of Vukovar, history would certainly have been different,» Sanader said.

The battle for Vukovar was crucial for Croatia, as it stalled the Yugoslav forces long enough to give Zagreb time to arm itself and prepare troops.

Vukovar's fall marked the beginning of Croatia's war of independence from the former Yugoslavia, which claimed around 20,000 lives.

During the Vukovar siege, some 1,600 defenders and civilians were killed and the town was razed. After the town's fall, Yugoslav forces expelled some 22,000 non-Serbs. Vukovar was reintegrated into Croatia in 1998 following a period of UN administration after the war. A total of 350 people from the Vukovar region are still reported as missing.