Biljana Plavsic, a Bosnian Serb biologist and ultranationalist political leader during the Balkan wars of the 1990s who expressed remorse and pleaded guilty to one count of crimes against humanity but later recanted and said she “would do the same again,” has died in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. She was 96.
Ms. Plavsic, a former professor at Sarajevo University, became notorious for applying biology to politics, declaring Bosnia’s Muslim population “deformed genetic material.” Known as the Iron Lady of the Balkans, she served as vice president of Republika Srpska and worked closely with Radovan Karadzic. She rejected the term “ethnic cleansing,” describing the separation of peoples as a “natural process.”
After the war, she broke with Mr. Karadzic and took over as president of Republika Srpska with Western support. She expressed remorse during a 2002 sentencing hearing, stating that Serbs had “allowed ourselves to become victimizers.” However, she later recanted, telling an Australian scholar she “would do the same again.”
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing