TRYING TO REASON WITH WAR CRIMINALS IN BOSNIA

IN FEBRUARY 1996, I asked the French Ministry of Defense if I could pay for a place on a military plane to Sarajevo, in order to avoid the long journey by road from Belgrade. I intended to talk to the Serbs in Bosnia to explain to them the advantages—not only to the international community, but to themselves, too—of putting their political and military leaders on trial.

My request was accepted, and soon afterward I was spending the night in a hotel near Sarajevo, whose façade had been destroyed by bombs. I made a statement to local journalists explaining the reasons for my visit: to try to convince Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić to turn themselves over to the international courts.

For the previous three days, the Serbs had been fleeing Sarajevo en masse as the city fell into the hands of the Bosnian Muslims. Thousands of people walked along a narrow dirt road, under heavy snowfall, to the city of Pale.

I spoke Russian with a Serbian civilian and managed to make him understand that I was looking for a car so I could follow this exodus to Pale. He had a dog with him; I showed him the photograph of my own dog, and we started chatting. He led me across town to a taxi, and the driver agreed to take the risk of driving me.

The mountain road was icy and filled with large numbers of cars, vans, and carts, all of them in a pitiful state. It took us six hours to drive the fifteen miles to Pale, which had become the headquarters of the Serbian forces in Bosnia.

There, I went to the press center run by Karadžić’s daughter, Sonia, as that seemed the best way of ensuring that my message would reach its intended recipient. Sonia wasn’t there, but her assistant read the message. His reaction was hostile; he violently disagreed with its contents and told me to wait at a motel two miles away.

It is not easy, being alone in a hostile environment, and wondering if it was really a good idea to attempt to reason with people who are beyond reason. I walked through the icy night to the Olympic Motel, which was more or less deserted, and drank tea in my room until around 8:00 p.m., when three plainclothes policemen entered my room, accompanied by a young woman, who acted as their interpreter.

I was told to follow them, and as I did they kept repeating, “You shouldn’t be afraid,” which only made me think that I probably should be. Sitting between two of the policemen in the backseat of the car, I started to wonder if we were going to an office or deep into the woods. Thankfully, we ended up in an office, where I was interrogated for two hours. They wanted to know if I’d had any contact with the Bosnians and on whose behalf I was acting. Then they tried to refute my arguments. Finally, they informed me that I had been ordered to return to Sarajevo the next day, and they accompanied me back to the motel.

In the morning, some English Reuters journalists, who had become worried when they hadn’t seen me the previous evening, came to my room. Two policemen stayed with us, to monitor our conversation. The journalists drove me to Sarajevo on a more direct road, and I was eventually able to fly home.

*   *   *

ON FEBRUARY 27, I went to Zagreb to see the minister in charge of Croatian war criminals (six of them, including General Blaškić, had been charged by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague). I told him of my wish that General Blaškić—whose extradition, he explained, could only be granted if the Croatian parliament changed its laws—should be arrested. I also emphasized that the accused could go to The Hague himself (or be pressured into it).

Two weeks later, Blaškić was transferred to The Hague and arrested.