There goes the Bosniaks’ hope for justice and the possibility of getting billions dollars for the damaged done in Bosnia if the guilty verdict were handed down.

Key to the court’s findings was its conclusion that no one in Serbia, or any official organ of the state, could be shown to have had the deliberate intention to “destroy in whole or in part” the Bosnian Muslim population - a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

The judges found that Serbia, though it supported the Bosnian Serbs, fell short of having effective control over the Bosnian army and the paramilitary units that carried out the massacre. It also rejected Bosnia’s argument that the accumulated pattern of atrocities during the war, fueled by Serb nationalism and driven by Serbian weapons and money, was tantamount to responsibility for genocide. [link]

If it is of any consolation for the Bosniaks, the Court ruled that Serbia failed to prevent the massacre in Sebrenica in 1995 and demands the handover of Mladic and Karadzic.

Let say the UN’s Court operates in a similar manner as in American legal system, the Bosniaks would have had some hope by battling it out at consequent civil lawsuits. Evidence against Serbia does not need to be as absolutely convincing as it is in a criminal case.

Serbia has surely ducked a bullet this time. Otherwise, not only does it have the first Head of State (Slobodan Milosevic) to be indicted for war crime but also become the first country to be ruled as a state-sponsored genocide, a hideous crime in a civilized continent, in this modern age.

Tokaca, who runs or works at Research and Document Center in Sarajevo, disagrees with the verdict and expresses that “Serbia has to come to terms with this part of its past and finally close this chapter… Nothing would improve good neighborly relations between our two states better than establishing the fact that Milosevic’s regime was responsible for the genocide in Bosnia, not Serbia’s citizens.”

For more, read the analysis.