Tolimir's life sentence for genocide in Srebrenica and Žepa confirmed

The Hague Tribunal today delivered a final verdict against former General of the Army of Republika Srpska Zdravko Tolimir (64), confirming his first-instance life sentence, reports the BiH news agency Patria.

The Hague Tribunal on 12 December 2012 non-definitively sentenced Tolimir to life imprisonment for genocide and other war crimes committed in Srebrenica and Žepa in 1995. The verdict confirmed that genocide occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Tolimir was an assistant to the former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, General Ratko Mladić, also charged with war crimes and genocide.

In 2012, the Chamber established that Tolimir's participation in two joint criminal enterprises of the political and military leadership of the RS was proven, whose goals were the mass killing and forced removal of the Muslim population from two eastern Bosnian enclaves.

Tolimir was also found guilty of the crimes of extermination, murder, persecution, and forcible transfer of Muslims from Srebrenica and Žepa from May to November 1995.

The verdict established that the mass killings of the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Žepa, as well as three Bosniak leaders in Žepa - Mehmed Hajrić, Amir Imamović, and Avdo Palić, along with the expulsion, abuse, and suffering of civilians, constituted genocide, as they aimed to destroy the Muslim population in eastern Bosnia.

Prosecutors said that Tolimir carried out the order of RS President Radovan Karadžić, also charged with war crimes and genocide, and General Mladić that all military-able Bosniak men from Srebrenica be killed, by planning the crime, while Tolimir claimed such orders never existed.

The prosecution argued that Tolimir, together with Mladić and other commanders in the Bosnian Serb army, was a participant in a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was the permanent removal of Bosniaks from Srebrenica and Žepa.