CRIME FORCE

The Serbian commander, Dragoljub Kunarac was arrested in 1999 by the ICTY and taken to the Hague along with two other soldiers to be tried for crimes against humanity.

The legal question was whether the acts of these soldiers were crimes against humanity or simply individual acts of depravity. In order to prove that the soldiers' acts were crimes against humanity, the prosecution in the Foca rape case argued three things:

1. The use of rape in attacks on civilians was widespread and systematic,
2. To support the allegation that rape was “widespread and systematic” the prosecution worked to show that the tactic was repeated and continuous (systematic) and that what had happened in Foca was a representative sample of Serbian methods of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia (widespread),
3. Rape was not simply an individual action but involved a chain of command. This did not mean that a commanding officer had ordered his men to rape, but that rape was occurring with his knowledge and he did not intervene to stop it.

The prosecution brought witnesses (whose identities were often concealed for protection) who described grisly ordeals of gang rapes, sexual enslavement and the existence of rape houses or rape camps.

The defense, on the other hand, argued that since the accused had not killed the women they had sex with, the acts should not be taken as a serious crime. Going further, a witness to the trial reported that the defense attorney provoked an audible gasp from the gallery when he concluded that, “The rape itself is not an act that inflicts severe bodily pain.” So, he argued, the victims were not exposed to any severe physical or psychological suffering.