Bosnia war survivors protest speech by head of UN court

Muslim survivors of Bosnia's 1990s war protested Wednesday during a speech by the president of a United Nations war crimes tribunal that has released several top Serb officials. Several young attendees unfurled a banner reading "R.I.P. JUSTICE" when U.S. judge Theodor Meron, head of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), started giving his speech to mark the 20th anniversary of the court's founding. They were quickly ushered from the conference hall in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. But several women from Srebrenica whose children were killed during the 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys continued the protest, turning their backs on the speaker. "We didn't put on headphones to listen the simultaneous translation of his speech," Hatidza Mehmedovic, whose two sons and husband were killed in Srebrenica, told Agence France Presse. "He does not deserve to be listened to since he rewarded war criminals for genocide" in the eastern Bosnian town, she said. "It's him, judge Meron, who played a crucial role in releasing Serbia from any responsibility for crimes committed in Bosnia by liberating its high officials." The Srebrenica massacre of Muslim males by Bosnian Serbs forces at the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war was ruled genocide by two international courts. The atrocity was the worst in Europe since World War II. One of the young protesters said their act was not targeting the ICTY "but directly judge Meron, who has put the court's credibility into question." In a statement, they condemned Meron's "disastrous decisions", a reference to several acquittals by the Hague-based tribunal earlier this year. Yugoslav ex-army chief Momcilo Perisic's 27-year-sentence for war crimes and crimes against humanity was overturned in February, with Meron saying that Perisic could not be linked directly to the crimes. In May, the ICTY also acquitted Serbian former intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic and his deputy Franko Simatovic. The ICTY was created in 1993 to try perpetrators of war crimes committed during the former Yugoslavia's bloody break-up.