A FORMER Serbian army general and chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav army was sentenced to 27 years in jail yesterday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
The conviction of Momcilo Perisic (67) for war crimes and crimes against humanity provides for the tribunal a link between the Belgrade regime of the late Slobodan Milosevic and the former Gen Ratko Mladic, leader of the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian civil war of the 1990s.
Mladic is facing similar war crimes charges over the Serbian genocide at Srebrenica, the ethnic Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia where some 8,000 men and boys were murdered in July 1995.
Perisic was convicted of murder, persecution and attacks on civilians in Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s. The charges included helping Serb troops plan and carry out war crimes, including the murders in Srebrenica and the 42-month-long siege of Sarajevo. He was also convicted of securing financial and logistical support for Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia.
Perisic is the first Belgrade official to be convicted for Serbia’s role in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia – a role the government in Serbia has always denied.
“Momcilo Perisic was found criminally responsible for aiding and abetting murder, inhumane acts, attacks on civilians and persecution on political, racial or religious grounds in Sarajevo and Srebrenica,” said Judge Bakone Justice Moloto.
The judge said the trial chamber found Perisic oversaw logistical assistance to Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia which included a “vast quantity of infantry and artillery ammunition, fuel, spare parts, training and technical assistance”.
The court also found Perisic bore command responsibility for the shelling of the Croatian capital Zagreb in 1995.
Serbia’s defence minister, Dragan Sutanovac, said the sentence was “too grave”.
“It certainly opens old wounds and no matter how hard we try to work on reconciliation, news like this takes us back to the past and creates certain problems and makes one sick in the stomach,” Mr Sutanovac said.
Perisic had kept Bosnian Serb Mladic on the Yugoslav army payroll list, and personally signed Mladic’s promotion to the rank of colonel general in 1994.
However, the court did not find Perisic had command authority over Mladic, despite all the support provided.
“Even though Gen Perisic had a collaborative relationship with Mladic and substantially aided his operations, the evidence does not establish that he exercised effective control over him,” Judge Moloto said.
Perisic was chief of staff of the Yugoslav army from 1993 until 1998 when he clashed with Milosevic over the government’s policy in Kosovo which led to Nato’s bombing of the country.
Milosevic, who went on trial at The Hague tribunal for war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia among other things, died in detention before the court proceedings ended. – (Reuters)