Croatia won the right Tuesday to sue Serbia for genocide after the highest UN court ruled that it had jurisdiction in the case.

The decision marks the second time Serbia will face the allegation of genocide at the International Court of Justice. Bosnia also accused Serb forces of being responsible for genocide during the brutal conflicts that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Croatia alleged that Serb attacks that killed and displaced thousands of Croats during the 1991-95 war of Croatian independence was a form of genocide.

Zagreb demanded that the court order Belgrade to pay compensation. Croatia also asked the court to order Serbia to help trace people missing from the war and return cultural items plundered during the fighting.

Serbia countered that the court had no jurisdiction in the case, saying that it was not a United Nations member state when Croatia filed the case in 1999.

But the 17-judge tribunal rejected the arguments by Serbia, ruling that the country had assumed the responsibilities of the former Yugoslavia after that state crumbled in the early 1990s – including its responsibility to adhere to the convention outlawing genocide.

In a 12-5 decision, the court ruled that it had “jurisdiction to entertain the case,” said the court president, Rosalyn Higgins.

The court will likely take years to hear the case and issue a ruling.

A representative of Serbia, Tibor Varady, criticized the ruling, saying that it would only serve to prolong tensions between the Balkan neighbors.

“I think it would be much better to insist consistently on individual criminal responsibility,” he said.

But the leader of the Croatian delegation, Ivan Simonovic, said the case should help both countries move forward by bringing legal closure for wartime atrocities.

President Stipe Mesic of Croatia described the ruling as “just.”

In a similar case brought by Bosnia, the court exonerated Serbia in February 2007 of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia in the early 1990s, but ruled that the authorities had failed to prevent the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.
Congo rebel to go on trial

The International Criminal Court cleared the way Tuesday to begin its first trial in January, in the case of a Congolese rebel charged with recruiting child soldiers and sending them into battle, The Associated Press reported.

The court in The Hague lifted its suspension of the case against Thomas Lubanga after the prosecution accepted a request that it hand over to the judges confidential evidence received from the United Nations.

The case is a landmark on several scores: Lubanga is the first defendant brought before the court since it was created in 2002 as the first permanent war crimes tribunal, and it is the first trial to deal exclusively with the use of child soldiers.

The judges were on the verge of throwing out the case in July and had ordered Lubanga’s release, saying that he could not get a fair trial because some of the material being withheld by the prosecution could help Lubanga’s defense.

The United Nations and other agencies in Congo had sought to keep the information private to shield field workers from the possibility of retribution.

Appeals judges agreed last month that Lubanga’s trial would be unfair unless all the evidence was disclosed, at least to the judges if not to the defense.

After reading the material, the three-judge tribunal ruled Tuesday the trial could go ahead and set a provisional starting date of Jan. 26.

Lubanga denies recruiting and conscripting children to fight in eastern Congo during 2002-03.

International Herald Tribune