The massacre in 1995 of thousands of Muslim men in the supposedly safe haven of Srebrenica, in former Yugoslavia, deeply shocked European and international opinion. There was shame at the failure of UN peacekeeping forces to protect the victims, anger at the actions of the Bosnian Serb forces who had carried out the killings, and a determination to bring their leaders to justice.
It would be some time before that determination bore fruit, but the prosecution and conviction of Zdravko Tolimir in 2012 was an important landmark. Tolimir, a general in the Bosnian Serb army and close associate of its notorious leader Ratko Mladic, had been present at Srebrenica, and also part of negotiations with the UN, defying an order to withdraw his forces. After its examination of his role in the events of 1995, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded by a majority verdict that Tolimir — in the words of the judge — “not only had knowledge of genocidal intent of others but also possessed it himself”.
He was convicted of genocide and also on other counts, including murder, persecution and forcible transfer relating to events in Srebrenica and in the enclave of Žepa. In one incident, around 1,000 Muslim men and boys had been captured, and taken to a warehouse into which Bosnian Serb forces tossed hand grenades and fired with machineguns. “It was his men,” stated the prosecution, “who were at the detention and execution and burial sites, making sure that the murder operation did its evil work until the last bullet was fired and the last body buried.” The court estimated that at least 4,970 Bosnian Muslim men had been murdered in actions in which Tolimir had played “a co-ordinating and directing role”.
After a 242-day trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Tolimir had conducted his own defence, claiming his actions had been a military operation against “terrorist groups” and that the numbers killed had been much smaller than the prosecution claimed. He launched an appeal but his conviction was upheld last year.
During the trial, Tolimir began to display strong religious beliefs and an air of martyrdom, wearing a prominent crucifix, and often insisting on saying prayers for the souls of everyone in court, including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, interpreters and secretaries.
Advertisement
“During the trial, he began to display strong religious beliefs
It was a humiliating end to what had been a successful military career. Tolimir had been born in 1948 in Glamoc, Bosnia-Herzogovina, and had risen through the ranks in the Yugoslav army before becoming head of intelligence and security in the Bosnian Serb army as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate into civil war in 1992. He reported directly to the dominant figure in the Bosnian Serb military, Ratko Mladic, whom he had befriended when Mladic was commander of Yugoslav troops based in the central Croatian town of Knin. The British general Rupert Smith, who commanded UN peacekeeping forces in Bosnia, met Tolimir several times. He later testified that Tolimir and Mladic had “functioned together, not in a hierarchy’’ as was clear from “their body language, the tone in which they spoke to each other”. Tolimir also had — through his intelligence role — close ties to the Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic.
As the war in former Yugoslavia was brought to an end, Tolimir was present at key negotiations in Dayton in the US. Yet after retiring from the army, he, Mladic and others were forced to go into hiding in 2005 after indictments against them were issued by the International Criminal Tribunal. His intelligence training helped him to plan their prolonged evasion of the authorities. “Tolimir was considered the mastermind of the actions to shelter Mladic for a long time,” said a Serbian government minister. In 2007, he was captured and brought to the Hague.
His wife Nada, who survives him, complained that the UN authorities failed to provide him with adequate healthcare during his imprisonment. Tolimir said in court that he had several strokes before his arrest. In recent years he had stents implanted in his heart.
In his Bosnian Serb homeland, he had some prominent supporters. The prime minister Zeljka Cvijanovic said he had been “a brave and honourable general who contributed greatly to the defence of his people”. Relatives of those murdered in the Srebrenica and other massacres, however, demonstrated their anger at what had happened in those dark days of 1995, when Zdravko Tolimir had been at the height of his power.
Zdravko Tolimir, Bosnian Serb general and convicted war criminal, was born on November 27, 1948. He died of natural causes on February 8, 2016, aged 67