'Iron Lady' Jailed for Bosnia War Crimes

Biljana Plavsic, the former Bosnian Serb leader known as the "iron lady", has been jailed for 11 years by the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague.

Plavsic had pleaded guilty to the persecution of Muslims and other non-Serbs in Serb-dominated areas of Bosnia during the 1992-1995 war. She had expressed remorse for the horrors committed, and urged Bosnian fugitives to surrender and face justice.

Judge Richard May said she had participated in crimes of "utmost gravity" and that "undue lenience would be misplaced".

But he said he took into account Plavsic's advanced age, and the testimony on her behalf by the former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, and others, who said she had played an important part in carrying out the peace agreement negotiated in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio.

At the same time, Plavsic, who was second only to wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, closed her eyes to murder, torture and plunder, the court said.

Experts estimate that more than 200,000 people were killed in the Bosnian war, as Serbs led a campaign to drive out Muslims and Croats from Serb-dominated areas and create a unified greater Serbia.

Mr May recounted that Bosnians were "mistreated, raped, tortured and killed" in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that Plavsic embraced and promoted.

"No sentence which the trial chamber passes can fully reflect the horror of what occurred or the terrible impact on thousands of victims," Mr May said.

After initially pleading she was innocent of all charges, Plavsic changed her mind last October and pleaded guilty to one count of persecution, a crime against humanity. Prosecutors dropped seven other charges, including genocide.

In changing her plea, Plavsic conceded she was responsible for the crimes listed in the indictment, including "forced transfer or deportation, unlawful detention and killing, cruel and inhumane treatment and inhumane conditions in detention facilities, destruction of cultural and sacred objects, plunder, wanton destruction, forced labour and use of human shields".

Speaking in Belgrade before returning to the Hague to hear her sentence, she said: "This is nothing compared to what misery I have seen in my life. This is the end of a road which I started a long time ago."