Bosnian Woman Faints During Testimony Against Serb War Criminal

A Bosnian Muslim woman testifying in a civil lawsuit against the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs fainted in a federal court as she described her rape and torture during the Balkans conflict in 1992. She said that the soldiers, who wore photographs of their leader Radovan Karadzic, captured her and her two young children and repeatedly raped her inside a mountainside shack. “I could not resist, I could not fight them. I could not resist because the others were holding me while my children were watching.” Although Karadzic has been indicted for genocide by the international war tribunal in The Hague, the lawsuit, which seeks millions of dollars from Karadzic, is the first time American courts have ever exerted federal jurisdiction on a Bosnian war case. Karadzic, who is believed to be hiding in Bosnia, is regarded as the mastermind of the genocide, rape, and torture that ravaged Bosnia in the early 1990s.

Media Resources: New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com) 2 August 2

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