THE NETHERLANDS: War crimes prosecutors have demanded that former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic be jailed for between 15 and 25 years as punishment for inflicting ethnic cleansing on Bosnia.
Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said yesterday this was the lenient option, requested because Plavsic (72) had admitted her crimes: "In the absence of a guilty plea we would have requested imprisonment for the rest of her life."
But, on the final day of a three-day hearing at the Hague Tribunal into the sentencing of the most senior official ever convicted at the court, Plavsic's defence lawyer, Mr Robert Pavich, said that, given her age, a 15-year jail term would effectively be a life sentence.
He asked the judges, who will announce the sentence early next year, to take account of Plavsic's remorse and her guilty plea, and requested a maximum eight-year sentence.
Plavsic, the former deputy leader of the Bosnian Serbs, has pleaded guilty to Crimes Against Humanity for her role in the ethnic cleansing that saw Serb forces sweep through Bosnia in 1992.
Her guilty plea meant tens of thousands of pages of evidence were not heard, but prosecutor Mr Mark Harmon produced selected excerpts from survivors of Serb detention camps.
He described the suffering of a female witness forced to spend her days mopping up the blood of fellow prisoners, while each night the Serb camp guards raped her. Another man smuggled half his meagre bread supply from one prison hut to another each day for his son - with his fellow prisoners unwilling to tell him that his son had been murdered by the guards. Their dilemma was solved when he too was killed by camp guards.
"These persons have lived in fear and pain which has marked them forever," said Mr Harmon. "The age of the accused does not trump the aggravating nature of the crime."
"Victims individually demand justice," said prosecutor Mr Alan Tieger. "The age of the accused does not trump the significance of the crime or the aggravating circumstances surrounding the crime for which the accused is to be sentenced."
The UN war crimes court ruled yesterday that it would not compel Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for genocide, to take a defence lawyer. His growing absences with poor health have been blamed on his insistence that he conducts his own defence.