UN finds Serbia not at fault for genocide

The United Nations’ highest court yesterday exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that it failed to prevent the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.

The International Court of Justice said Serbia also failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the genocide after the Bosnian Serb army captured the UN enclave in July 1995, and ordered Serbia to hand over suspects for trial by a separate UN court.

It specifically demanded that Serbia hand over General Ratko Mladic, who oversaw the Bosnian Serb onslaught at Srebrenica, to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It was the first time a state had been tried for genocide, outlawed in a UN convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust, although individuals have been convicted in genocide cases linked to massacres in Bosnia and Rwanda.