Bosnian Serb Refuses to Plead to Foca Rape Charges (Reuters)
Originally published by Reuters, July 12, 2002
THE HAGUE (Reuters) — A Bosnian Serb former paramilitary on Friday refused to plead to charges of enslaving and raping Muslim women in 1992, echoing the defiant courtroom stance of ex-Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
"I do not wish to plead to any of these charges and counts," Radovan Stankovic told the U.N. Hague tribunal after being invited to plead to two counts of crimes against humanity and two of war crimes for allegedly running what was effectively a brothel for Serb soldiers early in the 1992-5 Bosnian war.
"I am guilty because I am a Serb and because I defended my people," said the burly, close-cropped defendant, who often smiled sneeringly as a court official read out the indictment graphically describing rape, enslavement and abuse at a house in the town of Foca in Bosnia.
A judge at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia entered "not guilty" pleas on behalf of the 33-year-old Stankovic, who was seized by NATO troops in Bosnia on Tuesday.
Stankovic's stand recalled that of Milosevic, who refused to plead to charges including genocide and crimes against humanity in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia for which he is currently on trial in The Hague. Judges entered "not guilty" pleas for him.
Women and girls as young as 12 were raped, enslaved and tortured in Foca, which became a byword for wartime rape last year when the Hague court convicted three former Bosnian Serb commanders.
That set a precedent for the tribunal by prosecuting rape and sexual enslavement as crimes against humanity. The three received long jail terms that were upheld by appeals judges in June.
The ex-commanders were on the same indictment as Stankovic, as were four other men. Of those, one was killed and another committed suicide in botched arrest attempts. Two remain at large.
Stankovic's arrest was the second of a war crimes fugitive in Bosnia in three days and at least the third SFOR raid in the hardline Serb area this year.
Last Sunday, former Bosnian Serb official Miroslav Deronjic, accused of ordering the killing of more than 60 Muslims and the burning of their village early in the Bosnian war, was seized and transferred to The Hague where he pleaded innocent.
