The announcement that former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic has become the first leading Serb official to plead guilty to crimes against humanity has been greeted as a triumph, in and around the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Unfortunately, it is very far from being any such thing.
Though lawyers in the case have denied it vigorously, there can be little doubt that Plavsic’s admission of guilt is in fact a plea bargain. She is actually confessing to only one of the eight charges originally brought against her and this charge, of persecution, is by no means the most serious. However, as a result of her single admission, all the other charges have been dropped. It is now being speculated that Plavsic will soon become a star prosecution witness in other trials, not least that of the fallen Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Once again, there are outright denials that any such deal was cut, but everything about this affair must cause us to doubt them. From the minute Plavsic surrendered herself quietly to UN forces in Bosnia, it was clear that more was happening than met the eye. She had given herself up only after, what was almost certainly, long and detailed bargaining with the war crimes authorities.
The original range of eight serious charges may therefore have been a blind. What would world reaction have been if this leading player in the Bosnian atrocities had been charged with just a single and relatively minor crime? So it was made to appear that the full might of the law was being applied to her. Yet strangely, because the authorities in The Hague so appreciated that Plavsic had given herself up voluntarily, she was allowed to remain free on bail in Serbia.
Plea-bargaining has been brought to a fine art in the United States, where it has become a trouble- and cost-saving convenience. Nevertheless, it has to be asked whether the plea bargain is really anything to do with justice? If a man is accused of a range of crimes, is it right that if he admits to just one of the criminal acts, he will escape prosecution for all the others? The awful logic of this is that criminals will come to realize that they can commit as many misdeeds as they like, sure that when they are finally caught, they will only ever have to admit to and pay the penalty for just one of them.
And justice is important also for the victims. Plavsic was originally accused of being a key player in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in both Bosnia and Croatia. If those accusations were true, and she has now been allowed to escape the consequences of her misdeeds, what are the Bosnian and Croatian victims to think? Will it be enough for them that she is admitting to the single charge that is very unlikely to earn her more than a year or two, if that, in comfortable custody?
Some might argue that if, as a result of this leniency, her future evidence helps to convict the real Balkan butchers, Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, this half-justice for her own crimes is worth it. Maybe the very fact that at last, a top Bosnian Serb has admitted guilt makes her position different. Nevertheless, that difference will be hard to appreciate for Bosnians and Croats who suffered the savage butchery that Plavsic and other of Milosevic’s henchmen unleashed upon them.
