THE HAGUE: Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will spend the rest of his life in jail for the “sheer scale and systematic cruelty” of his crimes in the war that tore his country apart a quarter of a century ago, UN judges said on Wednesday.

Grim-faced and silent, the 73-year-old stood in the dock as judges in The Hague said they had upheld his 2016 convictions for genocide in the Srebrenica massacre and war crimes throughout the 1990s.

In one of the last remaining cases from the break-up of Yugoslavia, the tribunal also increased his original 40-year sentence, saying it was too light for his role in the worst bloodshed in Europe since World War II.

Bereaved family members stood up as one and applauded and cheered in the public gallery of the court after the verdict, which is final.

Judges at the original trial “underestimated the extreme gravity of Karadzic’s responsibility for the most grave crimes committed during the period of conflict, noted for their sheer scale and systematic cruelty”, head judge Vagn Joensen said.

“Karadzic’s contention that he was a psychiatrist and poet with no military training ignores his extensive authority over Bosnian military forces.” The panel of appeals judges therefore “imposes a sentence of life imprisonment”, he said.

Around 100,000 people died and 2.2 million others left homeless in the three-year war, during which prosecutors said Karadzic wanted to “permanently remove Muslims and Croats” from territory claimed by Bosnian Serbs.

Published in Dawn, March 21st, 2019