Serb doctor gets life for running prison camps

A BOSNIAN Serb doctor was jailed for life yesterday for exterminating and persecuting Muslims, but the UN war crimes court cleared him of genocide.

It was the first time in the court’s ten-year history that judges have given a life sentence, the maximum allowed.

Milomar Stakic, aged 41, established a network of prison camps where hundreds of Muslims were killed and thousands were tortured, raped or treated with extreme brutality.

Stakic was convicted on five counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, specifically of extermination, murder and persecution. He will be eligible for parole after 20 years.

Stakic looked stunned as he stood along with the rest of the court in The Hague to hear the sentencing.

Although it has never been imposed before, Judge Wolfgang Schomburg said the maximum penalty was not restricted to genocide.

Genocide is the most serious crime to come before the court and the hardest to prove. Only Bosnian general Radislav Krstic has been convicted of genocide. He was jailed for 46 years.

The balding, bearded Stakic was charged with two counts of genocide and six more counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes, for murder, rape and torture in the camps in the Prijedor region of Bosnia during the summer of 1992.

To gain a genocide conviction, the prosecution must prove a prior intent to destroy an ethnic group wholly or in part. In Prijedor, the ruling said, the object was to displace the non-Serb population, and “this cannot be equated with the intent to destroy it”.

The court said that as the top administrator of the Prijedor region, Stakic was responsible for the atrocities committed there.

Stakic has been at the tribunal’s detention unit since being handed over by Serb authorities in March 2001. In the seven months of hearings ending last April, 101 witnesses testified.

He claimed he was a “puppet” nd had no real power. But the court ruled that he actively carried out his duties as president of the Prijedor administration, signing orders that perpetuated hatred of non-Serbs and assisting military campaigns of ‘ethnic cleansing’ of tens of thousands of civilians.