NY Court Orders Serb Leader to Pay $4.5B
N E W Y O R K, Sept. 26, 2000 -- 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.”
He ruled that Karadzic defaulted in the lawsuits, leaving thejuries only to decide what he owed the plaintiffs in damages.
Both trials featured several witnesses who traveled from Bosniaand appeared anonymously, describing scenes so disturbing that BillWalters, the foreman of Monday’s jury, said he had nightmares.
“It was not easy to come up with compensation, but it was alsonot hard,” Walters said.
War Crimes Charges
The plaintiffs alleged gross human rights abuses, includinggenocide, torture, rape, execution, war crimes and other humanrights abuses in an ethnic cleansing campaign to drive non-Serbiansfrom their homes in Bosnia Herzegovina and to establish Serbiancontrol of the region.
A 12-year-old girl who now lives in Chicago described during thetwo-week trial how her leg had been blown off by a mortar attack inBosnia when she was 5.
Other victims described the nightmares and difficulty they haveliving after being raped repeatedly and witnessing the murders ofloved ones. Some told stories of men being forced to have sex withone another or others being forced to drink motor oil. Another saidhe saw Serbian soldiers cut off the head of one man and play soccerwith it in front of the man’s friends.
Mirza Hirkich, a plaintiff who testified during the trial, saidshe didn’t expect to ever see a penny of the damages award, but shesaid: “I feel great because I felt they believe us.”
“They believe what we went through,” she said. “I wanted allthose people to understand how guilty were all the Serbs who didbad things.”
Walters said it was important for the jury to send a messagebecause it was clear Karadzic was responsible.
“The guards did the same things all over the country so therewas no doubt in our minds that there was a master plan,” he said.