Hague court set to rule on Bosnia genocide

[Doondoo]

Can a state commit genocide? Should an entire nation - not just its presidents, generals, and soldiers - be held responsible for humanity's worst crime?

In one of the most momentous cases in its 60 years, the UN's highest court will deliver its judgment next week on Bosnia's demand that Serbia should be made accountable for the slaughter, rape and displacement of Bosnian Muslims in the early 1990s. Bosnia could seek billions of dollars of compensation if the decision goes its way.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague opened the case against Serbia last year, before 16 judges.

"If Serbia were convicted of genocide, it would burden our future for decades," said Serbia's lawyer Radoslav Stojanovic in Belgrade on Friday.

"It is the accumulation of solitary crimes - the dreadful repetition of evil acts - that emerges finally, clearly, as the super-crime of genocide," Bosnia's US advocate Thomas Franck told the judges last year.



http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=294042007

[Benhurst]

1. This could have bad implications for BushAmerica.

Oh, I forgot. We have declared ourselves not subject to any laws, divine or mortal.

Whew!

[struggle4progress]

2. Highest U.N. court to rule whether Serbia, as a nation, committed genocide in Bosnia (AP)

The Associated Press
Published: February 25, 2007

THE HAGUE, Netherlands: The United Nations' highest court is delivering a historic ruling Monday whether Serbia is guilty of genocide for the killing, torture, rape and expulsion of Bosnian Muslims — the first time an entire nation is being held to judicial account for the ultimate crime.

Bosnia has said the government in Belgrade under then-President Slobodan Milosevic armed, financed and encouraged Bosnian Serbs to conduct an ethnic cleansing campaign that amounted to genocide in an attempt to create a "Greater Serbia" during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

Serbia has said it was not responsible for the actions of Serb paramilitary groups, that the war was a conflict among ethnic groups, and that there was no intent to destroy Bosnia's Muslim population in whole or in part — a key element in genocide as defined in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

If it rules against Serbia, the court could order Belgrade to pay compensation, which would be determined in negotiations. Bosnia has said Serbia should pay restitution for life and property to both the victims and to the Bosnian state, claims that could total billions of dollars (euros) ...

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/26/europe/EU-GEN-World-Court-Genocide.php