scholarly journals Traumatized War Criminal? Documenting the Case of Esad Landžo

2020 ◽  
pp. 105756772094078
Author(s):  
Olivera Simic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Psychological Trauma ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Serious Injury ◽  
Main Protagonist

Perpetrators’ voices have been traditionally ignored in the transitional justice field and beyond. Esad Landžo was only 19 when he committed the crimes of willful killing, torturing, and causing serious injury to the detainees of notorious Čelebići camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2001, Landžo was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the crimes he committed in 1992. After serving two thirds of his sentence in 2006 and settling in Finland, Landžo and the Danish filmmaker, Lars Feldballe Petersen, embarked on the project of making a documentary movie about Landžo’s traumatic memories, remorse, and regret. Landžo had a strong urge to extend his apology to each victim individually and in 2015 went to Čelebići to meet his former detainees. This article will build on a scarce conversation in scholarly, and legal discourse, as to why psychological trauma is considered to be an experience that belongs to victims. It will analyze difficult and untold perpetrators’ experiences of criminal acts and explore whether in these experiences there is potential for inner and group understanding. This article draws on the author’s interviews with Landžo, the main protagonist in the movie The Unforgiven: A War’s Criminal Remorse, a film that documents the extraordinary story of Landžo: from his denial to redemption.

Perpetrators and victims

Focaal ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (57) ◽  
pp. 50-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
The Other ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
Individual Justice ◽  
Local Discourses

This article juxtaposes local understandings and narratives on justice and reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina with those of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). By looking at notions of collective innocence/guilt, the development of victim identities, and the relativization of the suffering of the other, it explores the failure of the ICTY to offer a convincing model of transitional justice in Bosnia. Although the ICTY disciplines the boundary between victim and perpetrator through measures for shared truth and individual justice, local discourses resist or transform these representations, thus tending to entrench rather than transcend national divisions. The findings of this article challenge prevalent instrumentalist understandings of transitional justice and its role in facilitating reconciliation. The article focuses on the communities of Konjic and Srebrenica and the ICTY outreach conferences held in these towns in 2004 and 2005.

The (Lack of) Impact of the ICTY on the Public Memory of the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina

2020 ◽  
pp. 559-570
Author(s):  
Jovana Mihajlović Trbovc
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Public Memory ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Public Domain ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Post War

This chapter tackles relations between facts established at the Tribunal and acknowledgement of these in the public domain of post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where three ethnically defined and mutually contesting interpretations dominate the public forum. Examining how this problem unfolds, this chapter follows the development of the public memory about the war. It intersects with the relevant International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) jurisprudence, aiming to detect potential changes in the dominant narrative. It analyses public debates whether the war was a product of Serbian aggression or a civil war within Bosnia; whether ‘ethnic cleansing’ was pre-planned by the Serbian side or an inevitable consequence of the war (examined through the Prijedor case); whether genocide was the overall aim of the Serbian side or whether it took place only in Srebrenica; and whether the Croatian side was a defender of, or aggressor in BiH (examined through the Ahmići case).

Some Kind of Justice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Orentlicher
Keyword(s):  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
International Justice ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Local Impact ◽  
Over Time

Created in 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has operated longer than any war crimes tribunal in history. It thus offers a singularly important case study of how and why the local impact of an international criminal tribunal (ICT) evolves over time; the circumstances in which international justice can advance the normative, reparative, and other aims of transitional justice; and, more generally, the goals ICTs are either well-suited or unlikely to advance. The book explores the ICTY’s impact in Serbia, whose wartime leader plunged the former Yugoslavia into vicious ethnic conflict, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which experienced searing atrocities culminating in the Srebrenica genocide, over the life of the Tribunal. It focuses on the Tribunal’s impact in three spheres: victims’ experience of justice; official, elite, and community discourses about wartime atrocities, as well as official gestures of acknowledgment; and domestic accountability processes, including the work of a hybrid court in Bosnia. While highlighting the perspectives of Bosnians and Serbians interviewed by the author, the book incorporates a rich body of interdisciplinary research to deepen their insights.

Narratives of Justice and War in Croatia

2020 ◽  
pp. 445-461
Author(s):  
Ivor Sokolić
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Self Defence

This chapter examines the relationship between war and justice narratives in Croatia, based on focus groups, dyads, and interviews conducted in 2014 and 2015. The war narrative is based on a pervasive conception of self-defence against a larger Serbian aggressor. It contrasts with a justice narrative that is focused on the norms of transitional justice and the expressivist effects of trials. The two narratives exist in the same space and interact with each other. This chapter outlines these narratives and analyses their reproduction. It argues that the emotional war narrative’s strength makes it difficult for the justice narrative to take hold and, consequently, for the trickle-down expressivist effects of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and human rights norms to occur. This tolerance for deviance was based on notions of legality that were defined differently in relation to Croats and Serbs.

Perpetrators on Trial

2019 ◽  
pp. 273-295
Author(s):  
Mirza Buljubašić ◽  
Barbora Holá
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Empirical Basis ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Existing research on atrocity crimes perpetrators is predominantly theoretical and generic. Exploration of characteristics of individuals tried for their involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide might provide an empirical basis for a better understanding of the nature of international crimes and of criminal trials after atrocities. This chapter analyses defendant-related and crime-related characteristics of perpetrators tried by all courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) following the armed conflict in the 1990s at the territory of former Yugoslavia. Based on original data, collected as of January 2016, it briefly examines perpetrators convicted of international crimes by domestic and international courts, and their socio-demographic and crime-related characteristics. In addition to enriching debates on perpetrators of international crimes, the results can serve as a basis for further discussions on transitional justice after atrocities in Bosnia, its scope, and merits.

scholarly journals Relativising Atrocity Crimes: The Message of Unconditional Early Release of Perpetrators Convicted by the ICTY (1998 – 2018)

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-96
Author(s):  
Priyamvada Yarnell
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Early Release ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Abstract Despite being found guilty of egregious acts, crimes against humanity and war crimes, 54 of the 90 perpetrators sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (icty) were granted unconditional early release (uer). This article argues that uer did a disservice to two principal expressive purposes of punishment - moral condemnation of the crimes and the overall norm projected by the icty, the ‘universal repugnance of group-based killing’. Fundamentally, punishment of perpetrators signifies the inherent worth of victims. Interviews with key stakeholders in Bosnia and Herzegovina revealed that the interviewees largely concurred with authors who posit that punitive justice conveys valuable messages to audiences. This article complements expressivist theories by demonstrating the extent to which expressivism was negated as perpetrators were granted uer. Finally, it proposes how early release in future tribunals and courts might be tailored to counter the negation of international criminal justice’s expressive value.

scholarly journals Guilty Plea Agreement in Proceedings Before the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia / Sporazum o priznanju krivice u postupku pred međunarodnim krivičnim tribunalom za bivšu jugoslaviju

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (5) ◽  
pp. 242
Author(s):  
Radenko Janković
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
International Criminal Tribunal ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Criminal Sanction ◽  
Legal Concept ◽  
Guilty Plea ◽  
Special Place ◽  
The Hague

Guilty plea agreement is a new legal concept in the criminal procedure legislation of Bosnia and Herzegovina that was accepted under foreign influences. While frequently applied, a number of contentious issues still remain. To resolve them it is necessary to study the agreement in other legislations. A special place here belongs to the procedure and practice of The Hague Tribunal and the Office of the Prosecution that influenced its standardization in Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a result, certain solutions are specific and do not exist in legislations of other countries of the former Yugoslavia such as, for instance, a separate hearing for the imposition of criminal sanction following the agreement’s acceptance. At the time of its introduction in the Bosnia and Herzegovina legislation, the Statute and the Rules of the Hague Tribunal were well-known, just like the practice created in proceedings before it and the Hague Office of the Prosecution. The majority of indictees before the Hague Tribunal were citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with many lawyers from Bosnia and Herzegovina acting as defence counsels. An examination of this issue contributes to a better understating of this principle, enables more proper application, but should, also, lead to better legal solutions.

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