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On Saturday 28 January 2006, the Humanitarian Law Center, a Belgrade-based NGO, and the ICTY held a conference in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, on crimes perpetrated in the municipality of Foca during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tribunal representatives and victims from Foca spoke about crimes committed there that included raping and enslaving Bosnian Muslim women,
and unlawfully detaining, torturing and murdering Bosnian Muslim men.
At the conference, Tribunal representatives explained to the Belgrade audience—which included Serbian judicial officials, students, members of civil society, and representatives of international organizations and the diplomatic corps—how the ICTY investigated, prosecuted, tried and convicted perpetrators who committed crimes in Foca.
Tribunal representatives spoke about the ICTY's efforts to hold accountable three members of the Bosnian Serb Army who repeatedly raped Bosnian Muslim women and girls as young as 12 years-old and used them as sexual slaves. The Tribunal convicted Bosnian Serb army members Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic to 28, 20 and 12 years imprisonment, respectively, for these
crimes. The Tribunal found beyond a reasonable doubt that members of the Bosnian Serb armed forces used rape as an instrument of terror and that these three convicts were among them.
Tribunal representatives described the case against Milorad Krnojelac, the commander of the most notorious detention camp in the area, KP Dom, where Bosnian Muslim men were held in inhumane conditions, regularly beaten and killed. They also described the Tribunal's continuing efforts to see to it that other accused for crimes committed in Foca are held accountable before domestic
courts.
The Tribunal's presentations were followed by public testimony from citizens of Foca on the crimes and deprivations they suffered.
The conference is part of the Tribunal's continuing efforts to contribute to peace and stability in the former Yugoslavia by communicating the facts about war crimes committed there—facts that the Tribunal has established in its courtrooms to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
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The conference is inspired from a series of events the ICTY has held in Bosnia and Herzegovina called "Bridging the Gap Between the ICTY and Local Communities." CD ROMs from these events, which have been held in Brcko, Konjic, Foca, Prijedor and Srebrenica, are available in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and English upon request to the Outreach Programme.
Courtroom proceedings can be followed on the Tribunal's website.
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