[ War crimes and the ICTY ]

A week ago the trial against the members of the military unit of the "Scorpions", suspected to have participated in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and in the genocidal massacre of Srebrenica started in the Belgrade war crimes court. It is the first trial dealing with the Srebrenica genocide taking place in Serbia. Parallely, eleven Bosnian Serbs "Scorpions" suspected of having participated in the massacre of over 1000 Muslim civilians in the Bosnian village of Kravica (near Srebrenica) in July 1995 have been detained and indicted before a Bosnian court.

According to ICTY Chief-Prosecutor Carla del Ponte and to the Serbian human rights

activist Natasa Kandic, the "Scorpions" were a special unit depending on the army of the

Republika Srpska and of the Serbian army of the Krajina and financed by the Serbian

intelligence service. The chain of command can be traced back to Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, and Slobodan

Milosevic, says Carla del Ponte.

The five members of the "Scorpions" Slobodan Medic, Pero Petrasevic, Aleksandar Medic,

Aleksandar Vukov, and Branislav Medic indicted in Belgrade are accused of killing six Muslim

civilists from the Srebrenica area near the Bosnian village of Trnovo in July 1995. They were

detained in Vojvodina only days after a video showing them shooting six people in the woods.

The video, which the human rights activist Natasa Kandic allegedly got from an ex-member of

the "Scorpions", was broadcasted on the Serbian state TV on 2 June 2005 and caused a waves of

shock in Serbia. A sixth "Scorpion" identified in the video is already on trial in Croatia,

but another indictee, Milorad Momic, is still on the run.

On the first day of the trial, the main indictee, Slobodan Medic, pleaded not guilty and

declared: "I do not pity anyone I killed, and I sleep well".

The Belgrade war crimes tribunal only recently rendered its first judgement: on 12

December 2005 it sentenced 16 indictees to a total of 251 years in prison for having killed

192 prisoners of war in Ovcara (near Vukovar) 20-21 November 1991. According to Natasa

Kandic, the trial for the war crimes of Ovcara have contributed to change the public opinion

towards war criminals in Serbia, not least because of the continuous presence of the families

of the victims during the trial (quoted by Danas, 17 december 2005, and published on

the website of Le Courrier des Balkans).