Plavsic release prompts rebukes in Bosnia, Serbia (News Feature)

By Ksenija Prodanovic and Drazen Simic Oct 28, 2009, 11:56 GMT

   Belgrade/Sarajevo - The early release of the former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic has unleashed criticism in both Bosnia and Serbia, but official circles in Serbia have remained silent.

   Plavsic, 79, was flown on Tuesday from Sweden, where she served two-thirds of her 11-year term for crimes committed during the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Hours after her release, she arrived in Belgrade and was taken to her apartment in the city centre.

   'Biljana Plavsic in Belgrade' and 'I feel free' were some of the headlines of Belgrade dailies on Wednesday. The newspapers did not comment on her release but largely reported on her arrival, quoting her as saying that she was happy to be free.

   'What can I say...the first day of freedom in 10 years,' Plavsic told reporters who flocked in front of the building in which she lives. 'I am staying (in Belgrade), but I am looking forward going to Banja Luka (Bosnia) to visit my friends there,' Plavsic added.

   Plavsic's return sparked only one negative comment in Press, a Belgrade daily, which wrote that she came back to her apartment and her wealth in Belgrade - as have so many other leaders of the 1990s - while ordinary people have struggled to make ends meet.

   'All of us living in the Balkans during the 1990s are painfully aware that crime pays,' Press said in an editorial. 'The criminals were not punished, the guilty were not arrested, the thieves were not jailed. Rather, they have accumulated so much money that five future generations of their descendants could not spend it all.

   'While they called people to defend their homes and fight until the end, they moved their homes and businesses to safety,' the daily added.

   Plavsic was sentenced in 2002 by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, pleading guilty to one count of crimes against humanity. In return for her plea, two counts of genocide and other charges were dropped.

   Although Plavsic's release did not draw any official comments in Serbia, many ordinary people were offended by her arrival.

   'How come those brave warriors from the Bosnian war always end up in Belgrade - not in some dump on the outskirts of Belgrade but in comfortable apartments and villas in posh areas? And none of them are living off their pensions, but they have their own businesses...shame on them,' one elderly passerby told Belgrade reporters.

   'Nice, very nice. You organize and plan killings, ethnic cleansing, you pit one nation against the other, you have thousands of dead on your soul and then you go to The Hague, confess, allegedly atone, then deny all that, spend couple of years in a prison and here you go - private plane, red carpet, national hero, martyr,' Petar Petrovic wrote on the website of Belgrade radio B92.

   'I just don't care,' one student told local television. 'I have my own problems to worry about.'

   In neighbouring Bosnia, still deeply divided and recovering from the war, Plavsic's release and the fact that she was welcomed by the Serb Republic Prime Minister Milorad Dodik prompted unambiguous condemnation.

   'She is a war criminal and nothing more,' Sulejman Tihic, head of largest Muslim party in Bosnia, told the daily Dnevni Avaz.

   'There is not a government in the world that would pay a trip to a citizen who confessed to genocide and then would give him a grand welcome,' Dnevni Avaz quoted Sefik Hafizovic, the Muslim vice president of the Serb Republic's assembly, as saying.

   Bosnian dailies published photos on their front pages of Plavsic and Dodik and reported that Plavsic was flown from Sweden by the Serb Republic government plane.

   'Victims paid for the flight,' daily Dnevni Avaz reported. Dodik responded that he had 'a moral obligation' to welcome Plavsic.

   'She went voluntarily and I was the one who sent her off. I believed it was my human obligation to do the same when she came back,' Dodik told B92.