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Did the ICTY issue indictments including all the most publicised atrocity allegations?
No. There were many surprising omissions.
Which ones?
All the major atrocity allegations, including Bosnian Death Camps, Bosnian Rape Camps, the three infamous mortar incidents in Sarajevo, and even some of the alleged massacres at Srebrenica were missing.
Why?
The ICTY clearly had great difficulty in finding evidence to support its indictments.
But there were people given long sentences for genocide?
Yes. Individual including General Krstic, Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic were all given very long sentences. But they were not linked to specific atrocities. Their convictions were based on the ICTY’s concept of ‘Joint Criminal Enterprise’ – that they must have conspired with others to plan genocide at Srebrenica and other crimes.
What was the evidence to support that?
No one really knows. Transcripts of ‘radio intercepts’ of Bosnian Serb Army military communications were put before the court, but in almost all cases the original recordings had apparently been destroyed. The primary forensic and DNA evidence supporting claims that 6,800 Srebrenica bodies had been identified was also unavailable to the Tribunal. So there wasn’t even hard evidence that any kind of massacre had taken place.
So did these atrocities actually happen?
Probably not. Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic admitted on his deathbed that there had been no death camps in Bosnia. Secret UN reports concluded that the Bosnian Serbs were not responsible for the Sarajevo mortar incidents. The Bosnian Muslim government was able to provide the UN Commission of Experts with data on just 126 cases of rape – not the 50,000 that had been claimed. And even NATO spokesman Jamie Shea acknowledged in 2001 that there had been no genocide in Kosovo.