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Biljana Plavšić Биљана Плавшић |
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In office 19 July 1996 – 4 November 1998 |
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| Preceded by | Radovan Karadžić |
| Succeeded by | Nikola Poplašen |
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| Born | 7 July 1930 Tuzla, Yugoslavia |
| Nationality | Serb |
| Political party | SPD (1992-1997) SNS-RS (1997-) |
| Religion | Serbian Orthodox |
Biljana Plavšić (Serbian Cyrillic: Биљана Плавшић) (b. 7 July 1930, Tuzla, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a former Bosnian Serb politician and university professor that recently served two-thirds of a sentence in Sweden as a result of a conviction by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes. She was released 27 October 2009. She was the president of Republika Srpska for two years from 1996 through 1998.
She was indicted in 2001 by the ICTY for war crimes committed during the war in Bosnia. She plea bargained with the ICTY. Before her political engagements, she taught biology at the University of Sarajevo. She is the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb politician to be sentenced.
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Plavšić was a university professor teaching biology at the University of Sarajevo and acted as Head of Department of Biology. She is a Fulbright Scholar, and as such she spent two years at Boyce-Thompson institute at Cornell University in New York doing botany research. She then specialized in electron microscopy in London, and plant virology in Prague and Bari. A highly accomplished scientist, she published over one hundred scientific works and papers which have been widely cited in scholarly literature and textbooks.
On 28 October 2009, Plavšić has been stripped of her degree by the University of Sarajevo [1].
Plavšić was a member of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS). She was the first female member of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, serving from 18 November 1990 until April 1992 after having been elected in the first multi-party elections in 1990 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
From 28 February 1992 to 12 May 1992, Plavšić became one of the two acting president of the self proclaimed Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thereafter she became one of two Vice-presidents of the Republika Srpska and from circa 30 November 1992 she was a member of the Supreme Command of the armed forces of the Republika Srpska.
She was infamous for some of her comments during the war, and for her April 1992 appearance in Bijeljina with Željko Ražnatović, aka Arkan. Some media report that In 1992, a widely-circulated photographed showed her stepping over the body of a dead Muslim civilian to kiss Arkan[1], however that photograph was not presented at her trial[2] and apparently can not be found[3].
Serbian President Slobodan Milošević's support for the "Vance Owen Plan" caused her to refuse to shake his hand, as she denounced him as a traitor to the Serbian nation. Vojislav Šešelj testified that "her positions were extreme, very extreme. She was popularly known as the Serbian Empress because of this extremism of hers."
The Dayton Agreement, signed in 1995, banned the then President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić from office and Plavšić was chosen to run as the SDS candidate for President of the Republika Srpska for a two-year mandate.
Vojislav Šešelj, at the Milošević trial, described Karadžić's motives for nominating her.
She held very extremist positions during the war, insufferably extremist, even for me, and they bothered even me as a declared Serb nationalist. She brought Arkan and his Serb Volunteer Guard to Bijeljina, and she continued to visit him after their activities in Bijeljina and the surrounding area... Radovan Karadzic...believed her to be more extreme than himself in every way. He thought that the Western protagonists who tried eliminate him at any cost would have an even greater problem with her... Radovan Karadzic believed that she would continue to occupy her patriotic positions until the end. However, several months after she was elected, Biljana Plavsic changed her political orientation by 180 degrees under the influence of some Western protagonists and changed her policies completely. [2]
Due to a growing isolation of the Republika Srpska after the peace was signed, she severed her ties with the SDS and formed Srpski narodni savez (Serbian People's Alliance of the Republika Srpska), and nominated Milorad Dodik, the then member of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska whose SNSD party had only two MPs, for Prime Minister.
This marked the beginning of political reform in the Republika Srpska and the cooperation with the International Community. She lost the 1998 election to the joint candidate of the SDS and the Serbian Radical Party of the Republika Srpska Nikola Poplašen. She was a candidate of the reform "Sloga" coalition. Her political career was in decline until the release of the indictment by the ICTY, after which it was completely terminated. During her time in prison, she released a book called "Witnessings" (Svjedočenja), revealing many aspects of the political life of the war-time Republika Srpska and casting an especially dark shadow on the then President of the Republika Srpska Karadžić, another ICTY indictee.
She was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia together with Momčilo Krajišnik and Radovan Karadžić for the "creation of impossible conditions of life, persecution and terror tactics in order to encourage non-Serbs to leave the area, deportation of those reluctant to leave, and the liquidation of others".
The Indictment charged Biljana Plavšić as follows:
She voluntarily surrendered to the ICTY on January 10, 2001, and was provisionally released on September 6.
On 16 December 2002 she plea bargained with the ICTY to enter a guilty plea to one count of crimes against humanity for her part in directing the war and targeting civilians and expressed "full remorse" in exchange for prosecutors dropping seven other war crimes charges, including two counts of genocide. Plavšić's statement, read in her native Serbian language, repeated her admission of guilt. It said she had refused to believe stories of atrocities against Bosniaks and Croats and accepted without question the claims that Serbs were fighting for survival.
However, in an interview she gave in March 2005 to the Banja Luka Alternativna Television, she admitted she had lied because she couldn't prove her innocence, as she was unable to find witnesses who would testify on her behalf.[4][5] She repeated this in an interview for Swedish Vi magazine in January 2009[6].
She was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She served her sentence at the women's prison Hinseberg in Frövi, Örebro County, Sweden (since 26 June 2003).
In December 2008 the Swedish Ministry of Justice rejected a request for pardon by Plavšić. She had cited "advancing age, failing health and poor prison conditions" as the reasons for her request.[7] Željko Komšić, a Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina had written a letter to the Swedish authorities in September 2008 urging them not to release Plavšić, stating that "any act of mercy would be big mistake and an insult to the victims and families of the victims".[7]
According to the New York Times, on September 14, 2009, Patrick Robinson, President of the United Nation's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, said Ms. Plavsic “appears to have demonstrated substantial evidence of rehabilitation” and had accepted responsibility for her crimes. The Times continued that "Under Swedish law, she becomes eligible for release Oct. 27, after serving two-thirds of her term, though her release date has not been set." The Times reported that it might take several weeks for Sweden to approve the release.[8] She was released on 27 October 2009. [9]
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