NY Court Orders Serb Leader to Pay $4.5B

N E W  Y O R K, Sept. 26 -- A former Bosnian Serb leader was ordered to pay $4.5 billion in damages for atrocities committed by hissoldiers.

The jury and judge hearing the civil case against RadovanKaradzic, who remains an international fugitive, said Monday thatthe United States can’t ignore genocide a world away.

“It’s very important that the United States of America rises tothe occasion when these things happen and we just don’t wait forthe United Nations’ War Crimes Tribunal,” U.S. District JudgePeter K. Leisure said in the Manhattan courtroom.

The jury awarded $617 million in compensatory damages and $3.9billion in punitive damages for injuries and deaths suffered by 39people. The damages were awarded to 13 women and 10 men, none ofwhom were in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

Second Decision in Weeks

The verdict came just weeks after a different jury returned a$745 million verdict against Karadzic in a civil case focusing onwomen injured in the war in the former Yugoslavia.

Both lawsuits had been brought under a 221-year-old U.S. lawletting foreign citizens sue foreign officials and citizens forviolating the law of nations.

Karadzic fought the claims through New York lawyers for fouryears before telling the judge he would not defend himself. He alsohas been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague,Netherlands, on charges of genocide.

Dollar Sign for Tragedy?

“Can you really hope to find truth or do justice or protectrights for people in distant nations?” Karadzic wrote. “Do youreally believe that attaching a U.S. dollar sign to human tragedyaround the world by empty judgments in uncontested lawsuits is astep toward peace or justice?”

Leisure, who presided over both trials, said it was vital in“our modern world where horrors like this occur that we don’t waitfor the United Nations’ International War Crime Tribunal, whichmight or might not be effective.”