{"id":8728,"date":"2026-05-06T02:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T02:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/8728\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T02:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T02:28:11","slug":"when-balkan-war-criminals-apologise-few-want-to-hear-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/8728\/","title":{"rendered":"When Balkan War Criminals Apologise, Few Want to Hear Them"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Serbian State Security Service chief <a href=\"https:\/\/balkaninsight.com\/2026\/04\/29\/convicted-serbian-security-chief-jovica-stanisic-apologises-seeks-release\/btj\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Jovica Stanisic<\/a> last week expressed remorse for his crimes &#8211; one of the few high-ranking officials to have done so. Another was former Bosnian Serb Army general <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2024\/nov\/14\/radislav-krstic-bosnian-serb-general-srebrenica-genocide#:~:text=Krsti\u0107%20became%20the%20first%20defendant,and%20pray%20for%20their%20souls.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Radoslav Krstic<\/a>, in November last year.<\/p>\n<p>However, such expressions of remorse have, so far, been largely condemned by right-wing politicians but also local communities in the countries from which they come.<\/p>\n<p>Why are remorseful defendants labelled as \u2018traitors\u2019, while those who celebrate their war crimes are treated as \u2018heroes\u2019? War crimes convicts in post-Yugoslav societies seem trapped in the hands of political elites who support the rehabilitation only of those who stubbornly deny the crimes for which they were convicted.<\/p>\n<p>For individuals as well as for society, the remorse of convicted war criminals can represent a form of catharsis. Without acknowledging crimes and then expressing some form of repentance, reconciliation is hardly possible.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tSubscribe to Balkan Insight Premium to read the full article.<\/p>\n<p>Please login to your account below if you are already a Premium Subscriber.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tBuy Premium Subscription<\/p>\n<p>Our Premium Service gives you full access to all content published on BalkanInsight.com, including analyses, investigations, comments, interviews and more. Choose your subscription today and get unparalleled in-depth coverage of the Southern and Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"buyPremium\"><a title=\"Buy Premium Subscription\" href=\"https:\/\/balkaninsight.com\/premium-subscription\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Buy Premium Subscription<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"contactPremium\">If you have trouble logging in or any other questions regarding you account, <a href=\"https:\/\/balkaninsight.com\/contact-us\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">please contact us<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Serbian State Security Service chief Jovica Stanisic last week expressed remorse for his crimes &#8211; one of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7289,4651,4652,4653,7290,42,7291,1407],"class_list":{"0":"post-8728","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-the-hague","8":"tag-biljana-plavsic","9":"tag-bosnian-war","10":"tag-croatian-war","11":"tag-icty","12":"tag-jovica-stanisic","13":"tag-the-hague","14":"tag-vojislav-seselj","15":"tag-war-crime-trials"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}