OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR WAR CRIMES MUST ALSO BE ARRESTED
20 July 2011
Along with the other civil society organisations in Serbia, CSS congratulates all those who have contributed to the arrest of Goran Hadžić, an ICTY indictee and a former President of Republika Srpska Krajina.
Hadžić is a simbol of the crimes committed by the Milošević regime against other nations. However, he has been arrested too late, and his arrest along will not suffice for justice unless others responsible for war crimes committed during Milošević’s rule are quickly dealt with. This specifically concerns the work of the Special Prosecutor for War Crimes, whose task it is to indict the many other protagonists of the crimes, ranging from crimes against the Bosniaks and Croats, to those against Albanians. Many such former functionaries of the various branches of Milošević’s repressive agencies are still working for institutions financed through the Serbian state budget.
After Hadžić’s delivery to ICTY Serbia will continue to face hurdles in its EU integration process if it does not demonstrate a readiness to prosecute all ranking participants in the joint criminal endavrous that was the Serbian regime in the 1990s. Only a continuing campaign of judicially addressing war crimes from the 1990s would mark the beginning of a minimal moral renewal of the Serbian state.