Momclio Krajisnik, former head of the wartime Bosnian Serb Parliament, was today sentenced to 27 years on five counts of crimes against humanity. As head of Parliament he was responsible for the deaths and expulsion of millions of Muslims in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.

The war crimes trial was held at The Hague, by a UN tribunal. This trial was especially poignant after the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, former Serbian President, was inconclusive after his death earlier in the year.

The atrocious crimes against humanity were carried out during the 1992-1995 war, in which, approximately 70, 000 Muslims were killed and nearly 2 million were displaced.

The judge found that the purpose of the mass “extermination” was in order to “ethnically recompose the territories” by reducing numbers of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in these areas.

The trial will however, will not bring back the thousands of lives lost from this inhumane genocide that was carried out purely on racist grounds. The lives that were lost were seen by the political leadership of the Bosnian Serb Parliament as a necessary consequence in order to achieve “Serb domination”.

What we can hope for is that crimes like these come to an end and that those perpetrators are held accountable for their malevolent actions. We should also hope that Krajisnik repents for the wickedness that he carried out. He may be sentenced to 27 years imprisonment but it is unlikely that he will ever be able to imagine the suffering that he inflicted on the thousand of Muslims.

Let's remember the lives that have been lost to genocide in our prayers this Ramadan.

Source: The Guardian

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