July
21, 2000
AP
News
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal
on Friday upheld a landmark ruling that established rape as a war crime, rejecting an appeal by a Bosnian Croat commander convicted of watching as a knife-wielding subordinate tortured and raped a female prisoner.
The five-judge appellate chamber rejected every ground upon which the defense contested the Dec. 10, 1998, judgment against Anto
Furundzija, 31.
"The appeals chamber has not been persuaded as to the existence of any legal errors which require it to intervene,'' the Guyanan presiding judge, Mohamed
Shahabuddeen, said in the ruling by the tribunal's court of last resort.
Prosecutors hailed the decision. "It demonstrates that people who are in a position of authority have a responsibility to govern the behavior of people under their authority,'' said Deputy Prosecutor Graham
Blewitt.
Furundzija, head of the special military police unit calling itself the "Jokers,'' stood by as one of his soldiers threatened a naked woman detainee and then raped her during interrogation.
Furundzija received a 10-year sentence for the attack, which happened a year into the 1992-95 Bosnian war during a bloody campaign in central Bosnia to expel Muslims from the Lasva River Valley. The soldier has been indicted but not captured.
Conviction sets legal precedents
Furundzija is one of 14 convicted war criminals sentenced to up to 45 years by the International War Crimes Tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, a U.N. panel, since it was established in 1993.
His conviction set two international legal precedents: the tribunal admitted the testimony of the victim, even though she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder that bordered on suicidal; and it expanded the definition of sexual assault to be more easily punishable as an act of torture.
Defense lawyer Luka Misetic had challenged the conviction on the grounds that the presiding judge, Florence Mumba of Zambia, had not disclosed her membership in a U.N. women's rights commission which advocated the inclusion of rape as a war crime. The panel ruled that Mumba had not shown bias in conducting the trial.
It also dismissed Misetic's claim that the sentence was excessive because the crime did not result in loss of life. The panel said the trial chamber had "exercised its discretion'' within the precedents.
Avril McDonald, a researcher with the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague, noted that the judgment reinforced the ruling of rape as a war crime under international law.
Quietly watching Friday's verdict was the defense team for three Serb paramilitary fighters accused of participating in the nightly rapes of Muslim women at detention centers in the southeast Bosnian city of Foca in 1992.
That trial, which began March 20, is the first international proceeding to focus on systematic rape and sexual enslavement.
