Tromp: Milošević died and Serbia bears no responsibility for crimes, although evidence suggests otherwise

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - The book „DEATH IN THE HAGUE – The Unfinished Trial of Slobodan Milošević“ by author Nevenka Nena Tromp was promoted today on the stage of the Chamber Theatre 55 in Sarajevo.

Nevenka Tromp is a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam. She is a former associate of Hague prosecutor Geoffrey Nice. 

Tromp said she believes the book will be very interesting reading for the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina and all others from the former Yugoslavia, but certainly for students and younger generations who need to start from some of the most fundamental knowledge about the wars and the work of the Tribunal, which, as she pointed out, greatly influenced what is currently thought and known about that war.

„The death of Slobodan Milošević actually interrupted the most important trial at the Tribunal, thereby depriving not only the victims but also those Serbs who fought for decades against that regime which also did them harm. The most important thing about the fact that there is no verdict for Slobodan Milošević is that the state of Serbia subsequently avoided responsibility for what he did as president of that state. In other words, if a verdict had been reached and he, as president of Serbia, had been found guilty of genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then Bosnia and Herzegovina's lawsuit against Serbia at the International Court of Justice would have been completely different,“ Tromp stated, reports the Patria agency. 
 

"This trial interrupted that continuity from individual and individual responsibility to collective, and then to state responsibility, and Serbia used that in a fantastic way and can now rightly say that there are no verdicts for the individuals who led Serbian politics in the 1990s, but also that there is no state responsibility of Serbia for genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and this is now seen in post-transition narratives where Serbia also seeks historical satisfaction, and that is why we now have these commissions for examining facts in Sarajevo and Srebrenica leading to Serbia seeking pardon,“ said Tromp.

She added that her book discusses the fact that there was no verdict for Milošević because he died, but all the evidence collected and existing in the Tribunal's archive actually suggests something quite different. 

„He was not president of the state because his wife put him in that position. He was president of that state for almost ten years, and if the people did not agree with that policy, they should have stopped voting for him. But, it was a great consensus of Serbia's wars of conquest in the post-Yugoslav period, where the borders of Serbia were to be expanded despite knowing that this could only happen through crimes, which absolutely culminated in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. My book is not that drastic in its conclusions, but I think it neutrally distills all those factual things through evidence, witness statements, video material... all to make it clear how much the Milošević case demonstrated individual, collective, and state responsibility and their connection,“ Tromp emphasized.

At the book promotion, in addition to the author herself, Latinka Perović, Sonja Biserko, Vasvija Vidović, Ehlimana Memišević, and Merima Šehić Prguda also spoke.