Bosnian Serb Leader Convicted by Hague Court of Genocide

Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was convicted of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, by a United Nations tribunal on Thursday for leading a campaign of terror against civilians that included the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 and the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo.

Mr. Karadzic, 70, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia convicted Mr. Karadzic of genocide for the Srebrenica massacre, which aimed to kill “every able-bodied male” in the town and systematically exterminate the Bosnian Muslim population there. The bodies were dumped in a mass grave.

Though acquitted on a second count of genocide, Mr. Karadzic was convicted of persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer and murder in connection with a campaign to drive Bosnian Muslims and Croats out of villages claimed by Serb forces during the country’s 1992-95 civil war.

In addition, Mr. Karadzic was found to have been “instrumental” in a campaign of sniping and shelling that terrorized the civilian population of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. And he was convicted of leading the taking of United Nations employees as hostages, to obstruct NATO from carrying out airstrikes on behalf of besieged Bosnian Muslim civilians.

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