First Defendant Faces Tribunal On War Crimes / Bosnian Serb pleads not guilty

1995-04-27 04:00:00 PDT The Hague -- The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal got its first defendant yesterday, three years after the Bosnian civil war broke out and nearly half a century after the last international war crimes court.

Sitting behind bulletproof glass, Bosnian Serb Dusan Tadic pleaded not guilty to charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, murder and rape -- the first time rape has ever been tried as a war crime.

The former bar owner and karate instructor will be tried in the summer before a three-judge panel. The court was created in November 1993 by the U.N. Security Council.

Unlike the Tokyo and Nuremberg tribunals set up by the victorious World War II allies, the Yugoslav tribunal is trying to mete out justice in a conflict that shows little sign of abating.

At least 200,000 people have died in the war, which began in 1992 when Bosnian Serbs rebelled at the Muslim-led government's decision to secede from Yugoslavia.

On Monday, the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Richard Goldstone of South Africa, named Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, Ratko Mladic, as war crimes suspects.

But the Serbs have rejected the tribunal's authority and refused to surrender suspects, making it unlikely that the court will get its hands on any big names.

Yesterday's preliminary hearing drew a blistering verbal attack from the Bosnian Serb "Ministry of Information," which called it a biased attempt to deny Serbs their "legitimate right to self-determination.

"Undoubted military and political supremacy of the Serb side in the Bosnian civil war . . . cannot be taken as evidence that that side committed crimes," the statement said.

Tadic's court appearance lasted just 20 minutes as he waived the right to have the indictment read and denied the 18-page document en masse.

"I plead not guilty, and I did not commit any of these crimes," he said confidently, speaking in Serbo-Croatian.

No trial date was set.

Since arriving in The Hague from a German prison Monday, Tadic has been the sole inmate at the tribunal's 12-cell holding block in a Dutch prison.

The court session was held in an insurance company building.

The presiding judge is Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, a former federal judge from Texas. The two other judges are Jules Deschenes, former chairman of the Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals in Canada, and Lal Vohrah, a former Malaysian High Court judge.

Defense attorney Mischa Wladimiroff, a Dutch law professor, said he will be raising preliminary motions. Although he was not specific, he has indicated that he may question the tribunal's jurisdiction.

Prosecutor Grant Niemann of Australia said he will file a motion May 18 to protect witnesses too terrified to testify in open court. If accepted, the motion will allow witnesses to give evidence in private or via a video relay so as not to be identified.

The 13 murders, one rape and numerous incidents of cruelty and torture Tadic is charged with were all allegedly committed in Serb- controlled Bosnia in the summer of 1992.

Most allegedly occurred at the Serb-controlled Omarska prison camp in the northwest Bosnian region of Prijedor, where four inmates died as a result of their torture and beatings.

Tadic was arrested in Munich, Germany, last year after being identified by Bosnian refugees there. The tribunal indicted him in February.

Of 22 suspects indicted by the tribunal, only Tadic is in custody. At most he faces life in prison if convicted.

At the last international war crimes tribunal, in Tokyo in 1948, seven of Japan's wartime leaders were sentenced to death and hanged. Sixteen were jailed for life.

Two years earlier, Nuremberg's tribunal for Nazi war crimes sentenced 12 of its 24 suspects to death and three to life in prison. Most of the Nazi leadership, including Adolf Hitler, committed suicide before trials.