Bosnian Serb who raped and tortured Muslims jailed by UN war crimes tribunal

The United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia today sentenced a former Bosnian Serb soldier and de facto military policeman to 15 years in prison for raping and torturing Muslim women and girls in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina between July and October 1992.

Dragan Zelenović, 46, pleaded guilty in January before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to seven counts of torture and rape as crimes against humanity for his role in a series of attacks on Bosnian Muslim women in the Foca municipality. Prosecutors withdrew seven other counts as part of a plea agreement.

Reading a summary of the judgment, Judge Alphons Orie of the ICTY said the three-judge panel found that “the scale of the crimes committed was large and that Mr. Zelenović’s participation in the crimes was substantial.”

The victims were particularly vulnerable, Judge Orie said, noting they were unarmed, defenceless and detained under brutal conditions for long periods, living “in constant fear of repeated rapes and constant assaults.” One victim was 15 years old.

“The victims at the detention centres in Foca suffered the unspeakable pain, indignity and humiliation of being repeatedly violated, without knowing whether they would survive the ordeal. The scars left by the sexual assaults were deep and might never heal.”

On 3 July 1992, Mr. Zelenović and other Bosnian Serb soldiers arrested at least 60 women, children and elderly men from the villages of Trošanj and Mješaji and took them to Buk Bijela, site of a temporary detention and interrogation facility. Once there, Mr. Zelenović raped and tortured a 15-year-old girl and aided in the rape and torture of another victim.

Mr. Zelenović participated later the same month in the gang-rape and torture of a number of women and girls being held at a high school in Foca. Anyone who resisted the sexual assaults there was beaten or threatened with death.

The 15-year-old girl from Buk Bijela was repeatedly raped again – including a gang-rape by Mr. Zelenović and three other men – between mid-July and mid-August while being held with more than 70 other detainees at a sports hall in Foca in conditions marked by inhumane treatment, starvation, overcrowding and a lack of hygiene.

In a separate attack in October 1992, Mr. Zelenović and two others raped four women being held in a house just outside Foca.

Mr. Zelenović was arrested by Russian authorities in August 2005 after leaving his home and fleeing to Russia under a false name to avoid detection and arrest. He was transferred to the ICTY last year.