Blood Money

Maybe we ought to track down the heirs of Josef Goebbels and Pol Pot and shower them with banknotes. Via Newsweek comes this peculiar tale of — I use the word loosely — justice:

This year, a record 20 accused war criminals have been turned over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague, compared with only three in 2004. But NATO troops didn't nab these fugitives in daring dawn raids. Negotiators did much of the work, offering generous financial incentives.

For their kind cooperation, those accused receive a full salary,

plus unspecified "compensation" for family and legal expenses. In the Republic of Srpska, the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia, benefits are even more generous: a full salary to the indictee himself, a double salary paid to his family, plus 80 euros a month to each of his school-age children. (A typical Bosnian Serbian salary is only 200 euros a month.) Family members also get four expense-paid trips a year to The Hague to visit indicted loved ones. And last year Srpska added a cash bonus of 25,000 euros for anyone who surrenders.

That's pretty good for your average violent sociopathic thug, isn't it? Ah, but it's just a start if you're a really high-ranking violent sociopathic thug.

According to Serbian media reports, Gen. Vujadin Popovic got a bonus of $1 million when he turned himself in on April 14. Popovic was the commander of the Drina Corps in Bosnia, which conducted some of the worst ethnic-cleansing campaigns in the region.

So: the killers — pardon me, alleged killers — and their families are rewarded for any atrocities committed, while the victims' families have so far gotten a nice big pile of go-fuck-yourself.

As if that's not depressing enough, imagine what else the indicted were able to negotiate before they turned themselves in. Is it a stretch to wonder if, by chance, they demanded and received secret assurances of reduced charges and/or lenient sentences?

Time will tell, but already this whole thing stinks to high heaven.

Comments

your calling them killers? 8000 people were ethnically cleansed huh? how about when the united nations sent a team of spaniards to search for the bodies only 120, YES ONLY 120 bodies were found anywhere even near the region, most of which were deaths that cannot be traced to serbs. a FAR cry from 8000. if you want killers, look at the turks/muslims which tortured/dominated the region for 600 years trying to rid the earth of the ORTHODOX religion and converting innocent serbs to islam, which make up the muslim population of bosnia today.