Zdravko Tolimir was the officer on the Bosnian Serb army's Main Staff who answered for intelligence and security in July 1995, when the Srebrenica enclave fell and thousands of its men were killed in a matter of days. A Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found, by a majority, that he had played a coordinating and directing role in two criminal plans that summer: one to murder the able-bodied Bosnian Muslim men of Srebrenica, and one to drive the Bosnian Muslim people out of Srebrenica and the neighboring enclave of Zepa. On December 12, 2012, it convicted him of genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war, and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
The Chamber found at least 4,970 Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica murdered between July 13 and August 1995, a figure it called a conservative minimum, and the majority held that the true number was, at a minimum, closer to 6,000. It found that some 30,000 to 35,000 women and children were forced out of the two enclaves. It also found that Tolimir did not merely know that others meant to destroy the Bosnian Muslims of eastern Bosnia: he shared that intent himself. On April 8, 2015, the Appeals Chamber reversed parts of the genocide conviction that rested on events in Zepa, and two smaller groups of killings, but upheld the remaining convictions and affirmed the life sentence. Tolimir died in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague on February 8, 2016, while he waited to be sent to a country to serve it.
Tolimir was born on November 27, 1948. He served as an officer in the armed forces of the former Yugoslavia, and from 1992, the first year of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, he headed the sector for intelligence and security affairs on the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb army known by its initials as the VRS. By then he had about 20 years of experience in that field. He was promoted to general-major in June 1994.
He was one of seven assistant commanders on the Main Staff and reported directly to its commander. Witnesses at his trial described him as the commander's right hand, and the Chief of Staff regarded him as the best-informed officer in the army. He received daily reports, attended the meetings of the commander's inner circle and oversaw the intelligence and security organs throughout the VRS, along with two units under the Main Staff's direct control, the 10th Sabotage Detachment and the 65th Protection Regiment. As chief of intelligence and security he also carried a legal duty to protect prisoners of war. The Trial Chamber found that he had known the situation on the ground in the eastern enclaves from March 1995 onward.
Srebrenica and Zepa lay in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, and both had been declared safe areas by United Nations Security Council resolutions in the spring of 1993. The Trial Chamber found that as early as 1992 there was a policy at the highest levels of Republika Srpska to remove the Bosnian Muslim population from eastern Bosnia.
That policy was reaffirmed in March 1995 by Directive 7, an order signed by the President of Republika Srpska. Sectors of the VRS Main Staff took part in drafting it, among them the intelligence and security sector that Tolimir headed. The directive set out to make life in Srebrenica and Zepa impossible for the people inside them. From March 1995 the VRS restricted humanitarian aid and the supply convoys of the UN Protection Force, known as UNPROFOR, and the Chamber found that Tolimir and his security organs helped decide which convoys were approved and which were turned back, adding to conditions in the enclaves that the judges described as unbearable. By June the VRS had surrounded Srebrenica. The majority found that its military operations against the enclave also targeted civilians, and that by early July the combined pressure had made life there unbearable.
The Chamber found that before Srebrenica fell, Tolimir denied to UNPROFOR that the VRS was attacking, and passed on the order of the President of Republika Srpska that operations should continue.
Srebrenica fell on July 11, 1995, without resistance. Thousands of the enclave's able-bodied men set off toward Tuzla. Between 25,000 and 30,000 people, most of them women, children and the elderly, sought refuge at the UN compound in Potocari. On July 11 and 12, the commander of the Main Staff met representatives of the Bosnian Muslim population, and the VRS announced that it would screen the men for alleged war crimes. One of Tolimir's subordinates attended those meetings, and the majority found that Tolimir was informed of what was discussed there.
By July 12, Bosnian Serb forces controlled Potocari. Men and boys were separated from their families and detained. About 9,000 women, children and elderly people had been put on buses and driven out by the end of that day. The majority found that the people who remained had no real choice but to leave.
The Trial Chamber found that a joint criminal enterprise to murder the able-bodied Bosnian Muslim men of Srebrenica existed from about July 11 to November 1, 1995, and that Tolimir was part of it by July 13 at the latest. On July 13 he proposed that captured men be placed indoors and out of sight, which the commander then ordered; the majority found that the proposal was meant to hide the plan to kill them. The same day he told an officer to stop preparing a detention camp for 1,000 to 3,000 of the prisoners, knowing, the majority found, that they would be killed instead. The Chamber held that through his security and intelligence officers he contributed to the murder operation, and that afterward he helped to cover up the killings.
The judges found that from July 13 to sometime in August 1995, at least 4,970 Bosnian Muslim men were murdered as the plan was carried out. They stressed that this was a conservative calculation of the minimum, and the majority held that the total was, at a minimum, closer to 6,000. The crimes, the Chamber said, were massive in scale, severe in their intensity and devastating in their effect, and they were carried out over a very short period in a small area. Tolimir, as the officer charged with protecting prisoners of war, was able to protect the thousands taken after the fall of the enclave and did not, and he took no action against subordinates who committed crimes.
Zepa was the next enclave. On July 13, 1995, the Trial Chamber found, Tolimir declared at a meeting that Srebrenica had fallen and that Zepa's turn had come, and he proposed that the enclave be taken quickly, so that the operation would be finished before the international community could condemn it or respond. The VRS began military attacks on Zepa on July 14 and seized UNPROFOR observation posts. Tolimir met representatives of the Bosnian Muslims of Zepa and told them that the only alternative to what was called an evacuation was military force. A second meeting, on July 19, ended without agreement.
On July 21, the Chamber found, Tolimir proposed that groups of Bosnian Muslim civilians fleeing the enclave be destroyed, so as to hasten the surrender of the Bosnian government army there. The majority treated that proposal as direct evidence of his own intent to destroy the group. On July 24, Bosnian Muslim representatives were compelled to sign an agreement on the disarmament of the enclave's defenders and the departure of its population. From July 25 to 27, about 4,400 women, children and elderly people were removed from Zepa under Tolimir's direct authority, and he was present throughout the operation. Homes and a mosque in Zepa were destroyed.
Three of the enclave's leaders were members of its War Presidency: Mehmed Hajric, Avdo Palic and Amir Imamovic. They were arrested after the removal of the population, and the majority found that Bosnian Serb forces killed them in mid-August 1995. The majority found that the killing of Avdo Palic carried a symbolic message to the population that there was no hope of survival.
The Office of the Prosecutor signed an indictment against Tolimir and two other senior officers of the Main Staff on February 8, 2005. A judge of the tribunal confirmed it on February 10, 2005, and the charges were made public on February 25. That first indictment alleged a joint criminal enterprise from March 11 to the end of August 1995 to force the Muslim population out of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves, and it charged all three men with murder, persecutions, inhumane acts in the form of forcible transfer, and deportation as crimes against humanity, and with murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war, all under Article 7(1) of the tribunal's Statute.
His co-accused were Radivoje Miletic, the Main Staff's Chief of Operations and Training, and Milan Gvero, its Assistant Commander for Morale, Legal and Religious Affairs. Their case was later tried with others as Prosecutor v. Popovic et al. Miletic was found guilty of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war, and on January 30, 2015, the Appeals Chamber reduced his sentence from 19 to 18 years. Gvero died before his appeal was decided, and in March 2013 the Appeals Chamber ended the proceedings and declared the trial judgment final in his case.
Tolimir himself was not in custody. On August 15, 2006, the Trial Chamber severed him from the Popovic et al. case and gave him a case of his own, number IT-05-88/2. By the time he came into the tribunal's custody, the charges against him included genocide. The operative indictment, filed on November 4, 2009, charged him with genocide (Count 1), conspiracy to commit genocide (Count 2), extermination (Count 3), murder (Count 4), persecutions (Count 6), inhumane acts through forcible transfer (Count 7) and deportation (Count 8) as crimes against humanity, and murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war (Count 5). It alleged two joint criminal enterprises, one to murder the able-bodied men of Srebrenica and one to remove the Bosnian Muslims of both enclaves, and it charged him with the foreseeable crimes of both: the opportunistic killing of smaller groups of men from Srebrenica and other acts of persecution. It also charged him under Article 7(1) with planning, instigating, ordering and aiding and abetting the crimes.
Tolimir was at large for more than two years after the indictment was confirmed. Before he was taken, he was regarded as the third most wanted war crimes suspect still at liberty in the Balkans. On May 31, 2007, he was detained near the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia; the tribunal said the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina detained him, and Bosnian Serb police said they had made the arrest. The Prime Minister of Republika Srpska informed the Office of the Prosecutor. With transport, security and logistical support from EUFOR, the European Union force in Bosnia, he was transferred to the tribunal's custody in The Hague on June 1, 2007.
He first appeared before Trial Chamber II on June 4, 2007. At a further appearance on July 3, 2007, he entered no plea, and a plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf.
Tolimir insisted on defending himself, and the pretrial phase turned on a dispute over script. For about a year he refused to accept court documents and materials from the prosecution, arguing that he could not read Bosnian, Croatian or Serbian written in the Latin alphabet and asking for everything in Cyrillic. On December 11, 2007, the Pre-Trial Judge dismissed the request, satisfied that he could read and understand the documents served on him. The Appeals Chamber dismissed his appeal on March 28, 2008, and his request for reconsideration on June 18, 2008.
On June 30, 2008, the Pre-Trial Judge found that his continued refusal was persistent and obstructive and directly affected the ability to hold a fair trial. Relying on the Appeals Chamber's holding that the right to represent oneself is not absolute and may be restricted where it substantially and persistently obstructs a trial, she gave him a last warning: by July 4, 2008, he was to tell the Registry that he would accept all materials in either script, or the Chamber would order counsel appointed to represent him. He kept the right to conduct his own defense. When his trial opened, he was the last accused in the tribunal's custody still waiting to be tried, and he conducted his own defense.
The trial began on February 26, 2010, the day after a pretrial conference. The prosecution case closed on January 17, 2012, and the defense case ran from January 23 to February 21, 2012. Over 242 trial days the prosecution called 183 witnesses and the defense four; the Chamber admitted 2,962 prosecution exhibits and 533 for the defense, and the transcript ran past 19,000 pages. The Chamber also took judicial notice of 523 facts already adjudicated in earlier cases. Closing arguments were heard from August 21 to 23, 2012.
Trial Chamber II delivered its judgment on December 12, 2012. One of its three judges dissented in part from the majority on many factual and legal findings, including the guilty verdicts, the finding that Tolimir took part in the joint criminal enterprises, the findings on the foreseeable crimes, and the genocide findings.
The majority found that both criminal plans existed. The enterprise to murder the able-bodied men ran from about July 11 to November 1, 1995; the enterprise to remove the Bosnian Muslim population of Srebrenica and Zepa began with Directive 7 in March 1995 and continued through the end of August. It found that Tolimir joined the removal plan from March 1995 and the murder plan by July 13, and that he played a coordinating and directing role throughout. It held that he knew of the genocidal intent of the other members, including the intent of the security and intelligence officers under him who carried the plans out, and that he possessed that intent himself.
On genocide, the majority found that the murders of the Srebrenica men, and the forced removal of the women and children, caused serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, and that the combined removal and killing operations, aimed at the Bosnian Muslim population of eastern Bosnia, had a devastating effect on its physical survival. On Zepa it went further. It found that the removal of the civilian population, the destruction of homes and a mosque, and the killing of the three leaders were meant to prevent the Bosnian Muslims of Zepa from ever reconstituting themselves, and that the suffering of the women, children and elderly people driven from the enclaves reached the level of serious bodily or mental harm amounting to genocide.
On conspiracy, the Chamber found an agreement between two or more people to commit genocide, and held that Tolimir entered it by the afternoon of July 13, 1995, at the latest, in relation to the murder of the able-bodied men of Srebrenica. Under the extended form of joint criminal enterprise, the majority also held him responsible for crimes that were a foreseeable result of the two plans: the opportunistic killing of smaller groups of Srebrenica men, the killings of the three Zepa leaders, and other acts of persecution.
The verdicts followed. Tolimir was found guilty of genocide (Count 1), conspiracy to commit genocide (Count 2), extermination (Count 3), murder as a violation of the laws or customs of war (Count 5), persecutions (Count 6) and inhumane acts through forcible transfer (Count 7). No conviction was entered for murder as a crime against humanity (Count 4), under the rules on cumulative convictions. He was acquitted of deportation (Count 8), which the Chamber found not proved, and it also found that the transfer of Bosnian Muslim men to Bratunac and Zvornik had not been proved as forcible transfer. All his convictions rested on individual criminal responsibility under Article 7(1) of the Statute.
The prosecution had asked for life imprisonment, and the Chamber imposed it. It weighed the mass killing of thousands of men and boys as part of an organized operation, the extreme suffering of the 30,000 to 35,000 women and children forced from the enclaves, and the irreparable harm to the victims. As aggravating factors it counted his high rank, his central role, his deliberate involvement in both criminal plans, his failure to protect the prisoners of war in his charge, and the abuse of his position to help conceal the crimes. In mitigation, the majority gave weight only to his good behavior in detention and during the trial, and gave it little weight. He was given credit for the time he had spent in detention and was to remain in the tribunal's custody until his transfer to the country where he would serve the sentence. He was 64.
Tolimir appealed. Written briefing closed on February 27, 2014, and the Appeals Chamber heard argument on November 12, 2014. It delivered its judgment in The Hague on April 8, 2015. One of the five judges was absent, and the bench sat under Rule 15 bis of the tribunal's rules. Tolimir was in court, with his legal adviser beside him, and stood for the reading of the disposition.
He had raised 25 grounds of appeal. The Appeals Chamber granted four of them in full or in part and dismissed the rest. It rejected his challenges to the judicial notice of the 523 adjudicated facts, to intercepted communications produced by the Bosnian Muslim side, and to the evidence of a prosecution expert and of six current or former prosecution investigators. It held that the Trial Chamber had erred in some of its handling of the expert's status, but that the error caused Tolimir no prejudice. It upheld the finding that the Bosnian Muslims of eastern Bosnia were a protected group and a substantial part of the wider group. On the death toll, it found that the Trial Chamber had wrongly counted 779 killings that fell outside the indictment, but held that Tolimir had not shown that this invalidated his convictions. It dismissed his challenges to the findings on the chain of command and his powers within it, on the existence of both criminal plans and his part in them, on genocidal intent, on the forcible transfers from Potocari and Zepa, on conspiracy, on cumulative convictions and on sentence.
The reversals were narrower. The Appeals Chamber held that the killings of Mehmed Hajric, Avdo Palic and Amir Imamovic were not part of the same murder operation as the Srebrenica killings and reversed the extermination conviction as it related to them. It held that the Trial Chamber had made no findings on how their loss affected the survival of the group, so genocidal intent was not the only reasonable inference from those killings, and it reversed the genocide conviction as it related to them. The finding that the three deaths were murders as a war crime and a crime against humanity stood. It also reversed the convictions for genocide, extermination and murder for the killings of six Bosnian Muslim men near Trnovo, holding that the Trial Chamber could not reasonably have inferred that the unit responsible acted in furtherance of the plan to murder the Srebrenica men.
The remaining convictions under Counts 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 were affirmed. The Appeals Chamber held that the genocide convictions for the killing of the Srebrenica men, and for the serious mental harm done to the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica, were alone enough that the reversals did not warrant any change in the sentence, and it unanimously affirmed life imprisonment, with credit for time served. One judge filed a partially dissenting and partially separate opinion and dissented on most of the grounds the majority dismissed, including the use of joint criminal enterprise as a mode of liability under customary international law. Two others filed partially dissenting opinions. When the sentence was confirmed, Tolimir smiled and crossed himself.
The Statute of the tribunal defines genocide through a list of acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Two of those acts were at the center of the Zepa part of the appeal: causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, under Article 4(2)(b), and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group's physical destruction, under Article 4(2)(c).
On serious mental harm, the majority of the Appeals Chamber held that no reasonable trier of fact could have found that harm done to the Bosnian Muslims of Zepa without findings on its long-term consequences, and it reversed the Article 4(2)(b) conviction to the extent that it rested on Zepa. Two judges dissented from that reversal.
On conditions of life, the Appeals Chamber held that the Trial Chamber had wrongly added the killings and the forcible transfers together to reach its finding. It also held that treating the destruction of the Zepa mosque as an act of genocide amounted to counting cultural destruction, which falls outside the definition, and that the forcible transfer alone had not been shown to aim at the group's physical destruction. It reversed the Article 4(2)(c) conviction in full.
None of this removed the Bosnian Muslims of Zepa from the case. The Appeals Chamber confirmed that they were members of the protected group and, together with the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica and eastern Bosnia, among the victims of the genocide for which Tolimir remained convicted.
After the appeal judgment, the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals took over jurisdiction of the case. Tolimir remained in the United Nations Detention Unit at Scheveningen, in The Hague, awaiting transfer to the country where he would serve his sentence. He died there on February 8, 2016, at 67. The Mechanism's President ordered an internal inquiry into the circumstances of the death.
Tolimir did not accept the charges; he entered no plea, a plea of not guilty was entered for him, and he contested the judgment on 25 grounds. Several findings against him were reached by majority. At trial, one judge dissented in part from the guilty verdicts, from the finding that he took part in the joint criminal enterprises, from the findings on foreseeable crimes, and from the genocide findings, including the finding that the remaining population of Potocari had no real choice but to leave. The figure of closer to 6,000 men killed was also a majority finding; the unanimous figure was at least 4,970.
Some charges were never proved. The Trial Chamber acquitted him of deportation and found that the transfer of Bosnian Muslim men to Bratunac and Zvornik had not been established as forcible transfer. The Appeals Chamber then reversed the genocide findings that rested on serious mental harm in Zepa and on conditions of life, reversed the genocide and extermination convictions for the deaths of the three Zepa leaders, and reversed the convictions for the six killings near Trnovo. On appeal, one judge would have upheld most of his grounds and questioned joint criminal enterprise itself as a basis of liability under customary international law.
November 27, 1948: Zdravko Tolimir is born.
1992: He becomes head of the intelligence and security sector of the VRS Main Staff.
Spring 1993: UN Security Council resolutions declare Srebrenica and Zepa safe areas.
June 1994: He is promoted to general-major.
March 1995: Directive 7 is issued; restrictions on aid and UNPROFOR convoys follow.
July 11, 1995: Srebrenica falls.
July 12, 1995: Men and boys are separated at Potocari; about 9,000 people are bused out.
July 13, 1995: The Trial Chamber finds him part of the plan to murder the Srebrenica men by this date.
July 13 to August 1995: At least 4,970 Bosnian Muslim men from Srebrenica are murdered.
July 14, 1995: The VRS begins military attacks on Zepa.
July 24, 1995: Representatives of Zepa are compelled to sign an agreement on the departure of its population.
July 25 to 27, 1995: About 4,400 people are removed from Zepa under his direct authority.
Mid-August 1995: Mehmed Hajric, Avdo Palic and Amir Imamovic are killed.
February 8, 2005: Indictment signed against him, Radivoje Miletic and Milan Gvero.
February 10, 2005: Indictment confirmed.
February 25, 2005: Charges made public.
August 15, 2006: He is severed from the Popovic et al. case; case IT-05-88/2.
May 31, 2007: Detained near the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
June 1, 2007: Transferred to the tribunal's custody in The Hague.
June 4, 2007: Initial appearance.
July 3, 2007: No plea entered; plea of not guilty entered on his behalf.
December 11, 2007: Request for documents in Cyrillic dismissed.
June 30, 2008: Final warning that counsel will be appointed if he keeps refusing documents.
November 4, 2009: Operative indictment filed.
February 26, 2010: Trial opens.
August 21 to 23, 2012: Closing arguments.
December 12, 2012: Convicted of genocide and other crimes; sentenced to life imprisonment.
November 12, 2014: Appeal hearing.
April 8, 2015: Appeals Chamber reverses parts of the convictions and affirms the life sentence.
February 8, 2016: He dies in the UN Detention Unit in The Hague.
February 9, 2016: Internal inquiry into his death ordered.