'Iron Lady' of Bosnia Serbs is jailed for 11 years

Bosnia's "Iron Lady", the former president Biljana Plavsic, was sentenced to 11 years in jail yesterday after admitting her role in the savage ethnic cleansing of the 1990s and expressing remorse.

Plavsic, the most senior official from the former Yugoslavia to plead guilty to war crimes charges, was given a relatively lenient sentence. The court listened to testimony that she later helped moves to peace.

Nevertheless the presiding judge, Richard May, told the UN tribunal in The Hague that Plavsic's crimes "were of the utmost gravity", and that the Bosnian Serb campaign of persecution against Muslims and Croats "destroyed countless lives". The victims were "mistreated, raped, tortured and killed", the judge said in a tightly argued judgment, adding: "No sentence which the trial chamber passes can fully reflect the horror of what occurred or the terrible impact on thousands of victims."

Asking Plavsic to stand, the judge said gravely: "Having given due weight to the factors set out, the trial chamber sentences you to a period of 11 years."

Dressed in a smart dark blue suit with a green jumper, Plavsic, 72, showed no emotion as the sentence was passed yesterday afternoon.

Muslim victims of the ethnic purge by Bosnian Serb forces between 1992 and 1995 said they were outraged by the length of the sentence. "I am speechless. I cannot talk at all. I am shivering, I am completely shaken," said Mujesira Memisevic, whose husband and children and other close family members were killed during a Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansing campaign in eastern Bosnia. "The sentence is outrageously low."

At the time of the war Plavsic was second only to the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who remains at large, as atrocities were unleashed on non-Serb communities. In 1992 she made her most infamous political gesture by kissing the notorious Serbian warlord Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, whose paramilitary troops led terror campaigns against Muslims and Croats. Arkan nicknamed her "the Serbian empress".

In January 2001 Plavsic surrendered to the authorities in The Hague, saying she wanted to prove her innocence. But last year she surprised many by changing her plea to guilty on one count of persecution, a crime against humanity. In return the prosecution dropped all other charges against her, including the most serious count of genocide.

Her admission of guilt could be used against the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, even though she has refused to testify against him. It is also seen as an important step towards reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia.

But the sentence raises questions on the consistency of the punishments handed down by the tribunal. The former Bosnian Serb military commander Radislav Krstic is serving a 46-year sentence after being convicted of genocide on the basis of his command responsibility for Serb forces. Plavsic faced a maximum of 25 years yesterday. The prosecution had asked for a prison sentence of between 15 and 25 years, but defence lawyers argued that this would amount to a life sentence for a 72-year-old woman and recommended eight years.

Judge May said he had considered a series of factors, including her guilty plea and acceptance of responsibility, her expression of remorse, her voluntary surrender and her conduct after the conflict.

One factor was the evidence of the former American secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who outlined Plavsic's role in winning support for the peace agreement negotiated in 1995 in Dayton, Ohio.

When she changed her plea, Plavsic accepted responsibility for the crimes listed in the indictment, including "forced transfer or deportation, unlawful detention and killing, cruel and inhumane treatment and inhumane conditions in detention facilities, destruction of cultural and sacred objects, plunder, wanton destruction, forced labour and use of human shields".

About 200,000 people were killed in the Bosnian war, the worst carnage seen in Europe since the Second World War, as Serbs led a campaign to drive out the minority Muslims and Croats from Serb-dominated areas and create a unified greater Serbia.