“I Would Do the Same Again”

• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718769703
• Author: Olivera Simić
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article
International Criminal Justice Review
2018, Vol. 28(4) 317-332
“I Would Do the Same
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DOI: 10.1177/1057567718769703
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Biljana Plavsˇic´
Olivera Simic´1
Abstract
After more than 20 years in operation, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY) has closed down at the end of 2017. Biljana Plavsˇic´ made history by becoming the only
woman, of 161 individuals, indicted by the ICTY. She was also the highest ranking official and the first
Serb leader to plead guilty to charges raised against her before the ICTY. After entering into a plea
agreement and serving two thirds of her 11-year sentence in Sweden, she returned to Belgrade in
2009 where she has been living ever since. In this article, I draw on interviews I undertook with
Plavsˇic´ in the course of 2017. In the first part of the article, I briefly introduce Plavsˇic´ and situate the
study within the field of international criminal justice and transitional justice. I then proceed to
discuss four themes that Plavsˇic´ most frequently returned to during our conversations. These
themes offer an original perspective into Plavsˇic´’s experience of being tried and sentenced by the
international tribunal and her subsequent release and return home. This article aims to fill a gap in
the literature by analyzing the reflections on the ICTY from its only woman defendant.
Keywords
ICTY, Plavsˇic´, detention, plea bargain, remorse, release
I would prefer completely to cleanse eastern Bosnia of Muslims. When I say cleanse, I don’t want anyone
to take me literally and think I mean ethnic cleansing. But, they’ve attached this label “ethnic cleansing”
to a perfectly natural phenomenon and characterized it as some kind of crime.
Biljana Plavsˇic´ (magazine Svet [World], September 6, 1993, cited in Lomigora, 2009)
Some things happened during the war, for example, ethnic cleansing. They [the ICTY] think that it is
something terrible. I can freely say I did not pay attention to that at all. Simply, I did not care much about
it. I had been ethnically cleansed together with my family. So, what? I was happy that we were all alive.
Biljana Plavsˇic´ (personal communication, August 15, 2017)
1 Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Corresponding Author:
Olivera Simic´, Griffith Law School, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
Email: o.simic@griffith.edu.au

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International Criminal Justice Review 28(4)
The only woman convicted of crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Biljana Plavsˇic´,1 remains the most famous female war criminal
from the former Yugoslavia and the only woman former president convicted by the international
courts.2 She also remains the first and only woman, and what’s more, a high-ranking political leader,
against whom the ICTY have brought charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. The former
leader of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), Bosnian Serb vice president and, later on, president of
Republika Srpska (RS), Plavsˇic´ is the ICTY’s oldest convicted defendant, now aged 87. Together
with Radovan Karadzˇic´ and Momcˇilo Krajisˇnik, she is the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb politician to
be sentenced.
This article aims to fill a gap in the literature by analyzing the reflections on the ICTY from its
only woman defendant. Rather than building on the extensive literature surrounding the alleged legal
transgressions in Plavsˇic´’s plea bargain and her case more generally, I want to turn attention to
Plavsˇic´’s own understandings of her trial and time in the Swedish prison, her subsequent release, and
current life in Serbia. As Mina Rauschenbach argues, while there has been a recent surge in research
interest in defendants and their role within international criminal processes (Glasius, 2014; Megret,
2005; Meijers & Glasius, 2013), much less attention has been given to how those accused and
prosecuted by international criminal tribunals perceive these institutions and make sense of their
procedures and practices.3 Due to the widespread recognition of the various challenges and critiques
that international criminal justice has to face (Schwo¨bel, 2014; Toyoki & Brown, 2014), the legiti-
macy of international criminal courts rests significantly on how multiple constituents perceive and
accept them, as mandate givers (states), justice stakeholders (victims, perpetrators, communities
affected by crimes of the past), or others (international organizations, civil society actors;
Buckley-Zistel, 2017). Among these, a discussion of the perspectives of the ICTY defendants on
ICTY work has been scarce. As Barbora Hola and Joris van Wijk argue, while “international
prisoners” have been scattered around Europe and Africa and almost half of the convicts have
already been (early) released, so far very little has been written about the conditions under which
such prisoners serve their sentences and what they do after their release.4
This research is based on 55 hr of semistructured phone and face-to-face interviews with Plavsˇic´
that I undertook between August and December 2017. I first contacted Plavsˇic´ in August 2017 with an
aim to conduct an hour-long phone interview about her postconviction life. I gained access to Plavsˇic´
through a mutual acquaintance for whom she has the highest respect. After our first conversation,
which lasted more than 2 hr, I received her permission and an invitation to call her should I like to
speak to her more. After 10 hr of phone interviews, I flew to Belgrade and spent 9 days with Plavsˇic´.
During that time, we discussed all aspects of her indictment, and her life before, during, and after her
conviction. Due to the sheer volume of data that I collected and the limitations that academic journal
articles present, I decided to take on board only a fraction of the information I gathered during my
research, concentrating on four themes that we explored in detail throughout the interviews.
This article provides a brief introduction into Plavsˇic´’s trajectory from politics to the conviction
and is divided into four parts. Part 1 covers Plavsˇic´’s personal reflections on her plea bargain, and
Part 2 zooms in on her alleged remorse. Part 3 examines how she looks back at her incarceration and
homecoming, and Part 4 touches upon her general views on the ICTY as an institution, a criminal
court to dispense justice for the past crimes.
The Several Faces of the “Serbian Iron Lady”
Before joining the Serb-dominated nationalist party (SDS), and entering politics in 1990, Plavsˇic´
was a university professor, respected scientist, biologist, and the dean of the University of Sarajevo
science faculty. She comes from a well-known and educated family and has spent most of her life in
Sarajevo. She was a Fulbright scholar and as such, spent 2 years at Cornell University in New York

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Simic´
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doing botany research. A highly accomplished scientist, Plavsˇic´ published over 100 scientific
papers, which have been widely cited in scholarly literature and textbooks. However, at the begin-
ning of the 1990s, she decided to “jump into” politics and leave behind her academic career:
Serb people were in danger. My aim, and all the work I did, was to prevent what happened in 1941—
namely to avoid Serb victimhood at the beginning of World War Two. I wanted to do everything to
prevent victimisation of Serbs and that is why I jumped from my professorship into politics. Serbs
wanted me to represent them. I got the largest number of votes from Serb people as a candidate for the
presidency.5 (B. Plavsˇic´, personal communication, August 15, 2017)
In Bosnia’s first postcommunist elections in 1990, another intellectual—Nikola Koljevic´, a liter-
ature and Shakespeare scholar—was elected, along with Plavsˇic´, as one of the two Serbian members of
Bosnia’s multiethnic collective presidency. Trained as a psychiatrist, Radovan Karadzˇic´ guided the
SDS party by nominating well-regarded intellectuals, primarily professors at the University of
Sarajevo, such as Plavsˇic´ and Koljevic´, as candidates for top offices (Donia, 2015, p. 61).6 Plavsˇic´ had
become the core of the Serb military–political leadership, together with Karadzˇic´, the then president of
RS, and Krajisˇnik, the former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker. In 1992, Plavsˇic´ became one of the
two acting presidents of the self-proclaimed RS of Bosnia and Herzegovina and from November 1992
she was a member of the Supreme Command of the armed forces of RS. As copresident of RS, Plavsˇic´
was in leadership during 1992, the year that witnessed the most lives lost during the Bosnian war.
Consequently, together with Karadzˇic´ and Krajisˇnik, Plavsˇic´ exercised primary control over the Bosnian
Serb power structures and allegedly publicly encouraged the forcible expulsions and the ethnic cleans-
ing. Following Bosnia’s postwar elections in 1996, Plavsˇic´ emerged as the president of RS.
Described variously as the “Serbian Iron Lady” (BBC News, 2003), “Serb Empress,7” a
“monster” (Sjoberg, 2007), “perpetrator” (Hunt, 2011, p. 137), and even “rapist” (Sjoberg, 2016),
Plavsˇic´ has become notorious for the intensity of her expressions of Serb nationalism during the war
(Bartrop, 2012, p. 254). She will continue to be remembered by many for her infamous and
inflammatory rhetoric asserting Muslim/Bosniak inferiority, and for defending the purge of...