ICTY upholds life sentence for Bosnian Serb army general News
ICTY upholds life sentence for Bosnian Serb army general

[JURIST] Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Wednesday upheld [judgment, PDF; press release] the majority of convictions for Bosnian Serb army General Zdravko Tolimir [case materials] for his involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre [BBC backgrounder]. Tolimir was arrested in Serbia in 2007 and convicted [JURIST report] in 2012. The appeals chamber overturned some of his convictions but kept most of his convictions in place. The court also upheld Tolimir’s life sentence, stating “in light of these genocide convictions alone, the appeals chamber considers that Tolimir’s responsibility does not warrant a revision of his sentence.”

The Srebrenica massacre has led to the arrest and prosecution of numerous war criminals including former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic [JURIST news archive]. At the end of January the ICTY upheld genocide convictions [JURIST report] for Vujadin Popovic and Ljubisa Beara for crimes perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces during the 1995 massacre. Also in January the war crimes division of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website] confirmed the indictment [JURIST report] of Dragomir Vasic on charges of genocide. In October the Netherlands Ministry of Defense [official website] announced plans [JURIST report] to appeal a ruling finding Netherlands liable for the deaths of 300 of the men and boys killed in the Srebrenica massacre.