35-Year Jail Term Upheld For Rebel Serb Leader

UN Tribunal Upholds 35-Year Jail Term For Leader Of Breakaway Croatian Serb State

New York, Oct 8 2008 2:10PM

The United Nations war crimes tribunal set up after the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s today upheld a 35-year jail sentence of a former political leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia who was convicted for his role in a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which sits in The Hague, reaffirmed the trial chamber’s decision in June last year to find Milan Marti guilty of 16 counts of crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Between 1991 and 1995 Mr. Martiserved as president or in other senior positions with the self-proclaimed Croatian Serb entity known as either the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina or the Republic of Serbian Krajina.

The ICTY found that Mr. Martiparticipated in a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to create a unified Serb territory by forcibly removing non-Serbs living in the areas under his control, and the convictions included murder, torture, deportation, persecutions, attacks on civilians and wanton destruction of civilian areas.

The breakaway state lasted from 1991 until 1995, when Croatian forces brought it back under control of Zagreb.

Both defence lawyers and the prosecution appealed against various parts of the findings, and the tribunal rejected nearly all of the grounds and ruled that those grounds it upheld did not warrant a revision of the length of the jail sentence.

Mr. Marti will remain in the detention unit of the ICTY in The Hague until arrangements are finalized for his transfer to the State where he will serve the remainder of his sentence.

© Scoop Media