The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague has sentenced Pavle Strugar, former General of the Yugoslav Peoples' Army (JNA), to eight years in prison for his role in the shelling of the historic old town of Dubrovnik, a Unesco World Heritage Site, on 6 December 1991. The sentence was pronounced on 31 January. Strugar was found guilty of attacks on civilians and of the destruction of historical monuments, two of the six counts on which he was indicted. This latest sentencing follows a seven-year sentence handed out last year to Admiral Miodrag Jokic of the Yugoslav navy who pleaded guilty to the same charges and subsequently testified against his former colleague. A third defendant is awaiting trial on similar charges.
The shelling of Dubrovnik caused international outrage at the time, compounded by the fact that Unesco officials were actually trapped by the bombardment and were able to prepare a very detailed report on the damage, later submitted to the court.
Legal experts believe that the ruling will establish an important precedent as it is only the second time, after Admiral Jokic’s conviction last year, that an international criminal court has convicted a military commander of acting in contravention of the laws and customs of war in relation to the destruction of cultural property, customary international law being notoriously difficult to define.
March 2, 2005
