War criminal Biljana Plavsic, dubbed Serbia's 'Iron Lady', dies aged 96 - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Biljana Plavsic at the start of her sentencing hearings at the international war crimes tribunal, 2002. (AP: Fred Ernst)
Former Bosnian Serb leader Biljana Plavsic has died at the age of 96.
Plavsic pleaded guilty at a United Nations tribunal to persecution as a crime against humanity for her role in atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
She was released from prison in 2009 and has since withdrawn from public life and lived in Belgrade.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Biljana Plavsic has died at the age of 96 in Serbia's capital Belgrade, according to Bosnian Serb public media.
Plavsic pleaded guilty at a United Nations tribunal to persecution as a crime against humanity for her role in atrocities during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
She served as a key high official on the Bosnian Serb leadership council throughout the war, and was considered as more liberal than other leaders and a vocal opponent of wartime Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.
Before entering politics as the former Yugoslavia crumbled, Plavsic was a professor of natural sciences and faculty dean at the University of Sarajevo.
She was one of the key Bosnian Serb high officials who implemented a peace agreement signed in Ohio while she was serving as a president of the Bosnian Serb political entity, Republika Srpska, just after the war ended.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, right, meets with Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic in 1997. (AP)
Nonetheless, she was indicted in 2000 by The Hague-based UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for her role in the wartime campaign to carve out a separate Serb entity in Bosnia.
She voluntarily surrendered to face justice in 2001, and later pleaded guilty to the crime against humanity of persecution during the war. Other charges were withdrawn.
"Mrs. Plavsic disregarded reports of widespread ethnic cleansing and publicly rationalised and justified it," the UN court said after she was sentenced.
The UN court said that Plavsic's guilty plea and her acknowledgement of responsibility "should promote reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the region as a whole".
Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told a sentencing hearing that Plavsic actively supported the Dayton peace agreement.
She "stood up for that at times when it was very difficult, when there were those who wanted to destroy the Dayton Accord," Ms Albright said, according to a court statement.
She was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment and was released in 2009 after serving two-thirds of her sentence.
Since her release from prison, Plavsic had withdrawn from public life and lived in Belgrade.
Republika Srpska's public broadcaster RTRS reported on Thursday, local time, that the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik had expressed his condolences at the news of Plavsic's death, saying that she was his close associate and deserved full state honours.
"Unfortunately, she was unjustly held accountable before the Hague tribunal," said Dodik, whom a Bosnian court barred from public office last year for his efforts to separate Republika Srpska from Bosnia.
Plavsic's death comes just weeks after former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic died in detention after being convicted of genocide and other crimes during the Bosnian war.
