Former Dutchbat soldier threatened with jail by Yugoslavia tribunal

A former Dutchbat soldier who gave evidence against Radovan Karadzic at the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague is facing imprisonment because he will not allow the tribunal to read the diary he kept in Srebrenica.


Lieutenant-colonel Johannes Rutten, who in 1995 was a second lieutenant in the Dutch peace-keeping force known as Dutchbat, faced direct questions from Karadic, former commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serb army, when he appeared before the tribunal in 2011.
He has now received a letter from the tribunal saying he risks a prison sentence of seven years and a fine of €100,000 if he continues to refuse to hand over his diary.
Private
Rutten says he used the diary as an aide memoir for his witness statement but will not make it available to the court, as Karadzic has demanded, because it is private. This puts him in contempt of court, the tribunal says.
He has been given two weeks to make the diary available and is allowed to block out personal passages.
Dutchbat was responsible for protecting Bosnian Muslims in the UN enclave of Srebrenica during the Bosnian war in 1995 when it was overrun by the Bosnian Serb army which seized muslim men. Around 8,000 were killed following the raid.
The trial of Karadzic on charges of genocide is continuing in The Hague.

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