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12 April 2003: "Arrest of Naser Orić"

It kind of slipped by unnoticed, but on 10-Apr-2003, Naser Orić was arrested in Tuzla, Bosnia-Herzegovina, following his indictment by the ICTY (see the ICTY press release; the oddly-placed punctuation marks are supposed to show up as diacritics, but you need the "Times PP" font for that).
Orić was the commander of the Bosnian forces bottled up in the Srebrenica enclave, later formally designated the 8th Operational Group of the Armija Bosne i Herzegovine (ABiH). He and the rest of the 8. OG command group were airlifted out of the enclave (by one of the ABiH's grand total of two helicopters) before it was overrun in July 1995.

Under Orić's command, the forces in the enclave (mainly irregulars based on the local Territorial Defence unit) conducted a series of fairly vicious raids against Serb-populated villages in the surrounding area during the second half of 1992 and early 1993; it is these raids that the charges relate to. These raids were also used by the VRS—the Vojska Republike Sprske, the Bosnian Serb Army—to justify besieging and, eventually, overrunning the enclave.

Obviously, the indictment of Orić is part of an effort on the part of the Prosecutor of the Tribunal to remain even-handed regarding the conflict; an indictment was issued in November 1995 against General Ratko Mladić, the commander of the VRS, and Radovan Karadžić, the president of the Republika Srpska. More recently, in August 2001, Lieutenant-General Radislav "Stumpy" Krstić, who was for all intents and purposes in command of the VRS Drina Corps during the capture of the enclave and the massacre that followed, was sentenced to 46 years imprisonment by Trial Chamber I.

The Serbs claim Orić's raiding campaign provoked the siege; the Bosniaks counter that the raids started after the Serbs cut off Srebrenica from RBiH government-held territory in the first place. It's all a bit of a "chicken and egg" situation. Be that as it may, while there may be mitigating circumstances, Orić's troops certainly appear to have violated the Geneva Conventions during the raids, and thus the arrest is warranted.

The Serbs will probably complain that the charges are too light. The Bosniaks will probably complain the indictment is unjustified altogether. As for Orić himself, I remember seeing an interview with him on Dutch television at the fitness centre in Tuzla he started after the war, in which said something to the effect that if the Tribunal wanted to indict him, he'd be in his office and would come quietly. To me, his attitude indicated a rare understanding of the Tribunal's role in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina.

When it comes to allegations of war crimes in the Bosnian War, one is never considered "innocent until proven guilty." Orić's comment indicated that he understood that, as a result of being tried before the Tribunal, there would be an official acknowledgement of what he and his troops did and, more importantly, did not do.

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