Historically, convicted or alleged war criminals tend to have been men - for example Nazi SS official Adolf Eichmann, former Serbian President Slobodan Miloševi, and ex-Japanese Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. However, former president of Republika Srpska, Biljana Plavši, is the highest-ranking Bosnian-Serb political to be sentenced for war crimes committed during the Bosnian War of the early-1990s. Between 23,000 and 25,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed by the Bosnia-Herzegovinian forces during the war - and a large proportion of those killings were initiated by Plavši. In fact, Plavši commented that 6million Serbs "needed to die" and that ethnic cleansing was a "natural thing", prompting many of the subsequent atrocities committed on the Bosnia-Herzegovinian side during the Yugoslavian wars. Following a trial at The Hague, she was charged with two counts of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity and one count of violation of the laws or customs of war - she was sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment in 2001 but plea-bargained and only served eight. Worryingly, the 84-year-old is currently attempting to stage a political comeback in Eastern Europe. Let's hope no nation elects an official who has orchestrated a horrendous genocide against an entire race - and that was a little more than two decades ago.
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.
