Bosnia’s wartime ‘mistresses of life and death’
Around a dozen women charged with crimes committed during Bosnia’s war in 1990s
She may once have been known as “the mistress of life and death”, but in the court trying her for war crimes Azra Basic hardly stands out.
Basic is among around a dozen women charged or convicted of crimes committed during Bosnia’s inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, which claimed nearly 100,000 lives.
Compared to the several hundred men convicted by local and international courts for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war, the number of women is not many.
But several ex-prisoners have already testified in court to Basic’s brutal torture of detainees since the trial opened in February.
Looking at her in court, it is difficult to link Basic with the brutal violence, including one murder, of which she is accused.
A short, silent, bespectacled woman, she avoids eye contact when in court.
When in 2011 the authorities finally caught up with her after the war, she was working in a food factory in the United States.
Basic has pleaded not guilty to war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at the start of her trial, including a charge that she killed a prisoner.
“This person was not me,” she told the court on Friday, her voice trembling.
“I swear before God and that’s all,” she added, as Slavisa Djuras, the son of Blagoje Djuras, the man she allegedly killed, looked on.
‘Better’ than men
Biljana Plavsic, now aged 86, remains the most famous woman war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. The former Bosnian Serb vice-president Biljana Plavsic is also the only one tried before the UN war crimes court in The Hague.
She was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2003 after pleading guilty to crimes against humanity for her leading role in a campaign of persecution against Croats and Muslims during Bosnia’s war.
“Women are just as capable of committing crimes,” prominent Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic, told AFP.
Drakulic recalled the scientific-racist rhetoric used by Plavsic during Bosnia’s war, the kind of ideas the Nazis would not have rejected.
Bosnia’s war crimes prosecutors say more cases against women suspects are in the pipeline. According to local media, some 40 women are being investigated for war crimes.
Visnja Acimovic, a 45-yearold Bosnian Serb who now lives in neighbouring Serbia, is one of them.
She is accused of having taken part in the 1992 executions of 37 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Vlasenica, most of them between 15 and 20 years old.
But as well as Basic, the United States has also extradited Rasema Handanovic, 44. She had lied about her past as a former member of a special Bosnian Muslim unit.
In 2012 she pleaded guilty to the execution of three civilians and three ethnic Croat prisoners of war in the central Bosnian town of Trusina.
In March, Switzerland extradited Elfeta Veseli, a former member of Bosnian Muslim forces, back to Bosnia. She is accused of the 1992 murder of a 12-yearold Serb in eastern Bosnia.