Only in Serbia: Convicted War Criminal To Train Young Officers

It was a disappointment, but no surprise, to human rights activists in Belgrade when it was officially announced that senior officers convicted of -- or alleged to have committed -- war crimes would join the teaching staff at the Military Academy.

Aleksandar Vulin, the Serbian defense minister, justified the move as an act of restitution.

"The decision...is a way of correcting the injustice [the officers] have been suffering," he said, adding that wartime generals had a "great deal of experience to impart to their younger colleagues."

One of those called upon to pass on their experience to future Serbian Army officers is General Vladimir Lazarevic, the former commander of the Pristina Corps of the Yugoslav Army. In 2009, he was convicted at The Hague tribunal of command responsibility for war crimes committed against the civilian population during the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Attempts by RFE/RL's Belgrade bureau to find out which subjects would be taught by the convicted general received only a vague response from the Defense Ministry, stating that "all prominent senior officers who served in the most recent conflicts (the Kosovo war and the NATO campaign in 1999) should pass on their knowledge and experience to academics."

The ministry further announced that while the General Staff and the ministry itself will provide a list of candidates, the final choice of instructors will be made by the Military Academy -- and that those selected would have the rank of unpaid visiting instructors.

Other notable officers slated to become instructors include retired general and Serb Radical Party member Bozidar Delic, as well as the current chief of staff of the Serbian Army, Ljubisa Dikovic -- both dogged by allegations of war crimes.

The lack of accountability seems to reflect a desire to forget -- or to rewrite -- the history of the 1990s.

However, at least some in Serbia, albeit a minority, are refusing to draw a veil over those dark years in the nation's history.

The Hague tribunal sentenced Lazarevic to 14 years in prison for his role in the crimes against civilians, and he was released having served two-thirds of his prison term.

Nemanja Stjepanovic of the Humanitarian Law Center is appalled that those responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians -- killed by troops under their command and in areas they controlled -- should be training new recruits to the officer corps.

"First, Lazarevic was convicted of abetting a joint criminal enterprise, as someone responsible for the deportation and forcible resettlement of Albanian civilians from Kosovo in 1999. He served out his sentence and returned to Serbia. In the area assigned to [Bozidar] Delic's 549th brigade, around 2,200 Albanian civilians were killed. In the area under the control of Ljubisa Dikic's unit, around 1,400 civilians perished, while in the Pristina Corps' zone of operations, under the command of Lazarevic from March 24 to June 10, 1999, 6,200 civilians were killed," Stjepanovic said.

There was no subsequent investigation of those crimes and nothing was done to punish the perpetrators, Stjepanovic added, and most of the victims ended up in mass graves in Serbia -- of which around 1,000 have been located thus far in four separate locations.

Yet, the Serbian defense minister insists that "there is no longer a reason to stand in the way of those who defended the nation during the NATO aggression" and keep them from the Military Academy, and that Serbia should "not be ashamed" of them any longer.

Stjepanovic is unimpressed.

"What are they going to teach? Will they teach students how to cover up war crimes? How not to reveal where the bodies are hidden? How to protect soldiers under their command guilty of war crimes? Is that on their syllabus? Or how to effectively expel 800,000 people from their homes? Because that's how many Kosovo Albanians were expelled in only 2 1/2 months, according to the records of The Hague trials," Stjepanovic said.

Sonja Biserko, the president of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia (HCHRS), is worried about "war criminals setting the moral standard in society and influencing the next generation of officers," but she also sees a broader agenda at work.

"It is not just about the return of convicted war criminals. There is a wider pattern of denial, the normalization of [former Serbian President Slobodan] Milosevic's policies and their continuation. It all means that Serbia may not be on the road to EU membership, because one of the bloc's conditions is for the country to face up to its past," Biserko told the Vojvodina Research and Analytical Center (VOICE).

The historian Dubravka Stojanovic, also speaking to VOICE, laments that "the same agendas and the same people who led Serbia into the wars [of the 1990s] are on the scene."

However, speaking to Novosti, retired General Radovan Radinovic defended Lazarevic's record.

"No one can take away his actions in defense of his country from NATO aggression. He is no criminal; he never committed a crime personally. He was convicted of command responsibility, which is a crime invented to persecute Serbs, and to go after the entire political and military leadership for opposing the seizure of their country, and defending itself against attack."

U.S. Ambassador Kyle Scott refused to comment on whether convicted war criminals should be instructing the new generation of Serbian officers, saying that he did not have all the details. However, he added that it could not happen in the United States because the rules of war and respect for the Geneva Conventions are taught at all military academies.

"Soldiers have a duty to disobey orders that are against the rules of war. It is inconceivable that someone like Lieutenant [William] Calley, whose unit was responsible for the massacre at My Lai [in South Vietnam in 1968], or the commander of Abu Ghraib [prison camp in Iraq] would be selected to teach American soldiers about the conduct of war or how to run a prison," Scott explained.

In Serbia, meanwhile, politicians and military commanders seem to be stuck in a vision of the past that is partial at best. Thus, Defense Minister Vulin and those who are defending the appointment of Lazarevic and others linked to war crimes as instructors at the Military Academy recall their service during the NATO bombing campaign -- cast as a war of self-defense -- while appearing to forget what led to it, and the thousands of Albanian civilians buried in unmarked mass graves, many of whose killers are still at large in Serbia.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL.