TUZLA, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Survivors of Bosnia’s Srebrenica massacre said Monday they hoped a UN court would sentence convicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic to life in jail when he receives his final verdict next week.
More than 23 years after the mass killings in Srebrenica, in which nearly 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces, the former Bosnian Serb political leader will hear a final ruling on appeal on March 20.
In 2016 Karadzic was convicted of genocide for his role in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre and sentenced to 40 years by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The 73-year-old was found guilty of 10 in total, including the orchestration of the 44-month siege of Sarajevo in which some 10,000 people died.
As part of a monthly tradition, some 100 people gathered in the center of the northeastern city Tuzla on Monday to demand justice over the Srebrenica killings.
“Like all other survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, I expect Radovan Karadzic to be sentenced to life imprisonment,” Amir Kulaglic, a 59-year-old Bosnian Muslim survivor, told AFP.
Kulaglic said “all the men” in his family were killed in the slaughter, including his father, uncles and their sons.
He joined demonstrators who stood in pouring rain to hold banners with photos of Srebrenica victims.
Some carried cloth banners embroidered with the names of those killed, their birth year and hometown.
Hajjra Catic, the 74-year-old president of an association of mothers in Srebrenica, said she also hoped Karadzic would get a life sentence.
But above all, she said wants to find the remains of her son Nino.
He was 26 in July 1995, working in Srebrenica as a correspondent for local media.
“I’ve been looking for 23 years and I’m living for the day I can bury him,” added the mother, whose husband was also killed in the massacre and found in a mass grave in 2005.
Next week’s verdict will be delivered by the Hague-based International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, which took over from the ICTY.
After years on the run, Karadzic was caught in 2008 on a Belgrade bus, disguised as a faith healer. His trial opened a year later, lasting until October 2014.
Karadzic’s military alter-ego, former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, is also currently appealing a life sentence before the international court on similar charges.
Srebrenica survivors hope Karadzic gets life sentence
Srebrenica survivors hope Karadzic gets life sentence
- Kulaglic said “all the men” in his family were killed in the slaughter, including his father, uncles and their sons
Trump announces plans for new Navy ‘battleship’
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump has announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”
“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The ship, according to Trump, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are still being developed by the Navy.
Just a month ago, the Navy scrapped its plans to build a new, small warship, citing growing delays and cost overruns, deciding instead to go with a modified version of a Coast Guard cutter that was being produced until recently. The sea service has also failed to build its other newly designed ships, like the new Ford-class aircraft carrier and Columbia-class submarines, on time and on budget.
Historically, the term battleship has referred to a very specific type of ship — a large, heavily armored vessel armed with massive guns designed to bombard other ships or targets ashore. This type of ship was at the height of prominence during World War II, and the largest of the US battleships, the Iowa-class, were roughly 60,000 tons.
After World War II, the battleship’s role in modern fleets diminished rapidly in favor of aircraft carriers and long-range missiles. The US Navy did modernize four Iowa-class battleships in the 1980s by adding cruise missiles and anti-ship missiles, along with modern radars, but by the 1990s all four were decommissioned.
Trump has long held strong opinions on specific aspects of the Navy’s fleet, sometimes with a view toward keeping older technology instead of modernizing.
During his first term, he unsuccessfully called for the return to steam-powered catapults to launch jets from the Navy’s newest aircraft carriers instead of the more modern electromagnetic system.
He has also complained to Phelan about the look of the Navy’s destroyers and decried Navy ships being covered in rust.
Phelan told senators at his confirmation hearing that Trump “has texted me numerous times very late at night, sometimes after one in the morning” about “rusty ships or ships in a yard, asking me what am I doing about it.”
On a visit to a shipyard that was working on the now-canceled Constellation-class frigate in 2020, Trump said he personally changed the design of the ship.
“I looked at it, I said, ‘That’s a terrible-looking ship, let’s make it beautiful,’” Trump said at the time.
He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship as well.
“The US Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.
