Genocide Trial Begins for Bosnian Serb nicknamed “Adolf”
Reading Eagle, p.A14
1 December 1998.
Though a Yugoslavian mechanic has admitted to 12 murders, prosecutors argue he is responsible for many more deaths.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — To his Bosniak prisoners, Bosnian Serb Goran Jelisic was a genocidal monster who, prosecutors say, once bragged “he had to kill 20 or 30 Muslims before his morning coffee.”
The 30-year-old mechanic used the nickname Adolf “with a perverse pride in the genocidal symbolism it represented,” U.N. prosecutor Terree Bowers said at the start Monday of Jelisic’s genocide trial at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.
Jelisic pleaded guilty in October to murdering 12 Bosniaks and Croats in and around the Serb-run Luka camp in Brcko, northern Bosnia, in May 1992, during the Bosnian war.
Prosecutors accuse him of the even graver crime of genocide, and they plan to present evidence about the killings that includes the possible involvement of more senior Serbs. The trial also gives survivors of Jelisic’s killing spree a chance to tell their story in court.
Bowers, an American, told a three-judge panel that Jelisic admitted in interviews with investigators to having committed many more murders than the dozen to which he has pleaded guilty.
Jelisic will be convicted of those murders and sentenced and the end of his trial, which is expected to last well into next year. He faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
“We will never be able to fix the exact number” of victims, Bowers said. “But if we are to believe even a small percentage of the totals which Goran Jelisic claimed, then his victims certainly number well over 100.”
The U.N. court, set up in 1993, has already convicted two Bosniaks, two Bosnian Croats and a, Bosnian Serb of murder, rape, torture and otehr war crimes, but it has yet to register a genocide conviction. [Note: Serbs were responsible for at least 90 percent of all war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992-1995]
An earlier genocide trial was halted when the defendant, Bosnian Serb Milan Kovacevic, died of a ruptured artery in his tribunal cell.
As Jelisic’s trial began, judges were read excerpts of a psychological report stating he was mentally fit to stand trial but suffered a borderline personality disorder.
Wearing a striped sweater and black jeans, Jelisic brought a laptop computer into court and took notes.
The first witness,a 37-year-old Bosniak who testified on the condition he be identified only as Wintess A, said he saw Jelisic, helped by Serb guards, murder two men by shooting them once each in the head despite the victims’ pleas for mercy.
“It was my impression that they enjoyed it more when the victim pleaded with them,” Witness A said.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
Photo of Goran Jelisic killing Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Brcko. Brcko massacre, in which Serb forces slaughtered at least 3,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians - men, women and children - constitutes intengral part of the Bosnian Genocide and systematic killings of innocent people during the Bosnian war.
