Arrest of Ejup Ganic and its implications

Such a move by Serbia, which has been in recent years trying to present itself as having moved away from its fascist Milosevic-era politics to being the poster boy for EU accession and even winning visa-free travel to the EU while war criminals like Ratko Mladic still remain in Belgrade, has once again reiterated that though Milosevic may be dead, his politics and policies towards neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina are not quite so. There are three main reasons that point to the political nature of this arrest.

First and foremost, there is no legal basis for the arrest of Dr. Ganic. The United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) carried out an investigation into the case of Dr. Ganic in 2003 and found no sufficient evidence to indict Dr. Ganic, and has since considered the case closed.

Second, just three days before the arrest of Dr. Ganic, Serbia and Bosnia signed an agreement whereby each country would try its own citizens for crimes they committed on their respective territories. The agreement was signed on Friday, and by Monday Serbia had already violated it.

Third, it occurred on March 1, the day Bosnia was celebrating its Independence Day and coincidentally on the same day as the opening of the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for a number of war crimes, including genocide.

The arrest was seen as a direct form of provocation against Bosnia and Herzegovina, and worse, as an attempt to cast a shadow over the trial of Karadzic for committing the worst crime to happen to any European people since the Holocaust, the genocide of Bosnian Muslims during 1992-1995.

None of this was mere coincidence. Official Belgrade has meticulously planned this arrest in order to fit perfectly with the timing of the Karadzic trial and Bosnia’s independence. Far more serious are the implications that will follow if the United Kingdom extradites Dr. Ganic to Serbia. Aside from the fact that a victim will be tried by a villain, the more serious implication is that by arresting a former member of the Bosnian Presidency and by putting him on the same court bench along with other war criminals, Serbia wants to shift public opinion on the war in Bosnia from being a “Serbian aggression against Bosnia” to being a mere “civil war.” So far, most of the indicted war criminals at the ICTY and at the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been Serbs, many having received long sentences for their war crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. Now Serbia wants to add a high-ranking Bosnian Muslim official to the court bench in order to give the world the impression that there were guilty parties on all sides, thus retrospectively changing the nature of the war.

The United Kingdom, an old friend of Serbia and supporter of Serbia’s deadly policies against Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-1995 war, once again proved itself far from being a democratic and just state by holding Dr. Ganic (who has diplomatic immunity) in lockup for longer than the 48 hours allowed by most democratic legal systems, during which time he did not have the right to contact his lawyer, telephone his family nor receive any visitors.

And all this happened after the tireless efforts of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to build confidence between the two Balkan countries. With Davutoğlu’s mediation, Serbia finally, after three years, agreed to accept Bosnia’s new ambassador to Belgrade. Bosnia has also (prematurely?) taken steps to improve ties with Serbia in an attempt to overcome the past and build better neighborly ties. But the recent moves show that Serbia is far from being a trusted partner in post-war reconciliation, and worse still, though it may have new presidents and prime ministers, its Milosevic-era politics still remain unchanged.