(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
The United Nations International Court of Justice in The Hague has dismissed mutual claims of genocide brought by Croatia and Serbia.
It ruled that neither side had proved the other responsible for genocide against protected populations during the so-called Croatian War of Independence from Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
As Kristina Kukolja reports, the outcome highlights the difficulty of proving what's seen to be the most serious of international crimes.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
Croatia launched the process against Serbia before the International Court of Justice in 1999.
It claimed that during the 1991-95 conflict expulsions and other acts amounting to genocide were carried out by Serb paramilitary groups and members of the then Yugoslav People's Army.
Croatia argued that Serbia should be held responsible for the alleged crimes and pay reparations, as a legal successor to Yugoslavia.
In great part, Croatia's case centred on the eastern border town of Vukovar, which was completely destroyed in the war and its non-Serb population driven out.
The ICJ found that crimes were committed by Serb forces and the Yugoslav National Army in parts of Croatia, including Vukovar, and they may have constituted genocide.
But in a majority vote, it ruled that Croatia had failed to prove intent to commit the crime by the state of Serbia.
Presiding judge Petr Tomka announced Croatia's claim is dismissed.
"Croatia has failed to substantiate its allegations that genocide was committed. Accordingly no responsibility under the Convention for the Commission of Genocide can arise in the present case. Nor can there be any question of responsibility for a failure to prevent genocide, a failure to punish genocide, or complicity in genocide. In view of the fact that the dolus specialis has not been established by Croatia, its claims of conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide and attempt to commit genocide also necessarily fail. Accordingly, Croatia's claim must be dismissed in its entirety."
In response to Croatia's suit, Serbia filed a counter claim, accusing its neighbour of ethnically cleansing local Serbs in the breakaway Krajina region in 1995.
Serbia says over 200,000 ethnic Serbs were expelled by Croatian forces during a military operation to reclaim occupied territory.
The matter had come before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which last year acquitted on appeal Croatian generals of war crimes in connection with the so-called Operation Storm.
In its decision, the ICJ referred to the Yugoslav tribunal's ruling, finding that no intent to eliminate Serb populations by the Croatian state was proven.
Judge Tomka said crimes had been committed, but Serbia's counter claim is unanimously dismissed.
"Since the present judgment has found that no international wrongful act in relation to the Genocide Convention has been committed by Croatia the submission requesting the cessation of the international wrongful acts attributable to Croatia and reparation in respect of their injurious consequences must also be rejected. For all the forgoing reasons the Court finds that the counter claim must be dismissed in its entirety."
Judgments made by the International Court of Justice are binding and cannot be appealed.
Only on one occasion, the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian-Serb forces in Srebrenica, has the Court confirmed genocide to have occurred in the Balkan conflicts.
Geoffrey Nice was the chief prosecutor during the trial of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
He's told Al Jazeera genocide is an immensely difficult crime to substantiate.
"Genocide is a very particular crime which requires a very particular intent -- the intent to destroy part of another group simply because of the nature of the other group, or the ethnicity of that group. In each case one side had said of the other that its crimes were committed with that particular intent. The court said these crimes that were committed might have qualified if the intention had been proved -- and, of course, the intent has to be proved as against the state because this is a state vs state case, it's not an individual case. It said the crimes might have qualified, but in neither case did they."
Geoffrey Nice says the genocide cases brought by Croatia and Serbia have also been an attempt to create an historical record each sees as more palatable.
"States or groups within states try and use court process to write a history that's favourable to themselves and it could be argued in these two cases, or this case and the counter claim case, that each side was trying to write history saying the other side committed genocide against us. Both sides have failed there. That doesn't mean to say that the exercise of trying to write history or rewrite history in a way that is favourable to one side or the other won't continue. It will now have to continue by other means."
The UN's top court has urged Croatia and Serbia to cooperate on the issue of outstanding missing people.
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