WOMEN LIED ABOUT RAPES IN BOSNIA, DEFENCE CLAIMS AT WAR CRIMES TRIAL

November 22, 2000 - (AP article in The Record – Waterloo, Ontario) Lawyers for three Bosnian Serbs accused of raping Muslim women argued yesterday that the women made up their accounts of torture, gang rape and sexual enslavement.

"The prosecution has not presented a single piece of evidence" incriminating the defendants, lawyer Slavisu Prodanovic said in closing arguments at a UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, in the first trial of rape as a crime against humanity.

Sixteen Bosnian Muslim women testified that paramilitary fighters overran their villages and detained them for up to two years at schools, a sports hall, motel rooms and homes during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

Victims who had been as young as 12 wailed with grief as they recalled being beaten and raped nightly by soldiers.

Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic are charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. If convicted, they would face a maximum life sentence.

Prodanovic didn't deny that sexual assaults occurred, but said if they did, "it by no means can be considered comprehensive" so as to fall under the jurisdiction of a war crimes tribunal.

The Bosnia Serb lawyer challenged a witness's account that she was raped for up to three hours by 15 soldiers in a house that prosecutors described as Kunarac's headquarters.

Prosecutors on Monday reminded the tribunal that its statutes require no corroboration of testimony from rape victims.

Prodanovic argued that the women were not detained but rather held in "collection centres" for their own safety during a Serb counterattack against Muslim forces. He claimed the women were free to leave.