New York, February 24: Former Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir is set to go on trial for genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in the final case scheduled for the UN’s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.
Tolimir, 61, was one of seven deputy commanders to wartime Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, still wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 15 years after he was indicted.
The poor health of Tolimir, arrested on May 31, 2007 in Bosnia-Hercegovina, has caused several delays to the start of his trial, which will start on Friday.
After initially refusing to enter a plea, he eventually pleaded not guilty and has chosen to conduct his own defence.
Tolimir is accused of committing genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity between July and November 1995, for the massacres of thousands of Bosnian Muslims in the towns of Srebrenica and Zepa.
He was responsible for intelligence and security for the Bosnian Serb army.
Among other things, Tolimir is charged over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in which nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed.
He stands accused of agreeing with Mladic and others to kill all the able-bodied Muslim men who were captured or surrendered after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995.
The indictment says he agreed to remove the remaining population of Srebrenica and Zepa “with the intent to destroy those Muslims”.
About 25,000 women, children and elderly people were forcibly transferred to Muslim-controlled territories while thousands of men and boys old enough to bear arms were executed.
The prosecution accuses Tolimir of having the “intent to destroy a part of the Bosnian Muslim people as a national, ethnical or religious group”.
Ex-general Radislav Krstic, another Mladic aide and the first person to be convicted of genocide by the court, was sentenced to 35 years in jail in 2004, including for the Srebrenica massacre.
Tolimir’s trial will be the last to start before the ICTY, created by the UN Security Council in 1993 to prosecute those accused of serious crimes during the 1990s Balkans wars.
The ICTY has indicted 161 individuals, of which 121 cases have been completed and 38 are underway.
—Agencies