Karadžić’s guilty verdict and forensic evidence from Bosnia’s mass graves.

Abstract

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s Karadžić verdict, eagerly awaited, was unsurprising. He was found guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. One part of the judgment was concerned with the Srebrenica events in which much forensic evidence from mass graves featured. Whilst this was to be expected, forensic evidence from the horrific crime scenes continues to be important in determining aspects of the crime base. This paper discusses the evidence and examines how the Chamber came to the conclusion that systematic killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men occurred and attempts had been made to conceal the crimes and human remains in secondary graves thus confirming the actus reus of genocide. In particular, the number of people killed was at issue. Despite the absence of compelling counter-theories on behalf of the accused, this paper demonstrates that contestations over the number of those killed remain and predicts that this is unlikely to change for the ongoing Mladić case.