ICTY PRESIDENT SAYS BOSNIA MUST HAVE BETTER JAILS

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (May 20,2008) - The President the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY),Fausto Pocar has expressed his concern at the state of jails and procedures in Bosnia that allowed Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic to escape.

Serbian war criminal Stankovic was convicted of setting up a detention centre in the notorious Karaman House in the eastern Bosnian town of Foca,during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia, where he kept nine Bosnian women in enslavement, including two 12-year-old girls. One of them is still missing.

He was found to have repeatedly raped, tortured and beaten two Bosnian girls for months, and offered them to other genocidal Serbian aggressor's soldiers, who raped and humiliated them.

The Bosnian town of Foca has become a byword for the use of rape as an instrument of the genocidal Serbian aggression against Bosnia.

After the genocidal Serbian aggressor took control of the town, they detained thousands of Bosnian civilians, locking up women and pre-teen girls in makeshift detention centres.

Being "upset and concerned by the fact that Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic has been on the run for a year," Pocar said he would visit Foca today to inspect the prison.

He said that after the tour would be hand recommendations to the international community on how to help Bosnia's authorities improve prison security.

The ICTY, which is set to close down in 2011 and transfer all the remaining cases to local courts, is concerned where and how the convicts would serve their terms once they are convicted before the local courts, Pocar said.

"It is clear this would have not happened if there were proper facilities and proper training of the guards," Pocar to told reporters yesterday.

He is on a three-day visit to Bosnia on through Wednesday to discuss the country’s cooperation with the ICTY.

During his three-day visit, Pocar will hold talks with the Bosnian authorities, members of the judiciary and genocide victims’ associations.

Pocar began his visit to Bosnia by meeting Zeljko Komsic, a member of the Bosnian State Presidency. He repeated that he would urge the the UN Security Council to keep the tribunal open until the most wanted war crimes suspects appear before it.

These include former political and paramilitary leaders of the Serbians living in Bosnia,Serbian war criminals Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic, and Stojan, Zupljanin, as well as the former leader of the Serbians living in Croatia,Serbian war criminal Goran Hadzic indicted for war crimes committed during the Serbian aggression against Croatia in the 1990's.
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