Biljana Plavsic

Villain and Victim,the former Bosnian Serb leader has been released from custody.

The release of Biljana Plavsic from prison in Sweden showed how much the nations in former Yugoslavia are still divided and how fresh the wounds are from the war that ended 14 years ago.

“There are 12 million Serbs and if 6 million of them get killed, there will still be enough of them to enjoy the fruit of our fight,” Biljana Plavsic, 79, told her opponents a decade and a half ago.

Even the former president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, stopped talking to her after she made this statement.

The two of them met again at the Hague Tribunal several years later. Milosevic defended himself and eventually died without being convicted – Plavsic admitted her crimes and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. She served her sentence in Sweden.
 
In her memoirs, written in prison, she wrote that she admitted her guilt in order to receive a shorter sentence. She was released after 8 years.

Controversies continue to surround Milosevic, however for the majority of Serbs, Plavsic is a perceived as a victim.

On her return to Belgrade, she was greeted by the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska,  Milorad Dodik, He has no dilemma either: “Biljana served her sentence and in doing so showed she was greater than many self-proclaimed heroes,” he said.

Although her arrival provoked a media circus, no one from the Serbian administration greeted her or has since paid her a visit.

“It would have been really awkward,” explained the head of the Serbian office for cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Rasim Ljajic.

Representatives of Bosniaks in Bosnia assessed her release as just more proof that there is no justice, and blamed Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister and former EU high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Escorted by the police, Biljana Plavsic went to stay at her family’s apartment in an elite part of Belgrade.

The former biology teacher and dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics in Sarajevo held a senior position in the Serbian community during the war in Bosnia and was president of Republika Srpska between 1996 and 1998.

During the war, she used her knowledge of biology to explain the nature of Muslims in Bosnia: “It is a genetically deformed material which embraces Islam. With each new generation, that gene becomes more concentrated, worse, more pronounced, and it dictates their opinions and behaviour.”

Of Bosnian Serbs she said that, “as a biologist, I know that the best ability to adapt and survive can be found among a species that lives next to those who are a threat to it.”