Azra Bašić, left, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. AFP / STR
Azra Bašić, left, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. AFP / STR
Azra Bašić, left, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. AFP / STR
Azra Bašić, left, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison. AFP / STR

Bosnia's wartime 'mistresses of life and death'


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She may once have been known as "the mistress of life and death", but in the court trying her for war crimes Azra Basic hardly stands out.

Ms Basic is among around a dozen women charged or convicted of crimes committed during Bosnia's inter-ethnic war in the 1990s which claimed nearly 100,000 lives.

Compared to the several hundred men convicted by local and international courts for crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war, the number of women is not many.

But several ex-prisoners have already testified in court to Ms Basic's brutal torture of detainees since the trial opened in February.

One witness at Ms Basic's trial recalled in testimony Friday the glimmer of hope he felt on April 26, 1992.

Dusan Nedic said he saw a woman called Azra enter a detention facility in the northern town of Derventa, where he was being held by ethnic Croats.

She spoke with other detainees, he recalled.

"For me it was a glimmer of hope," said Mr Nedic. "I told myself that a 'woman should not be aggressive as men.'"

But he was wrong.

"She started to beat the detainees, she was jumping on them while they were on the floor," the 55-year-old shoe factory worker said.

Looking at her in court, it is difficult to link Ms Basic with the brutal violence, including one murder, of which she is accused.

A short, silent, bespectacled woman, she avoids eye contact when in court.

When in 2011 the authorities finally caught up with her after the war, she was working in a food factory in the US.

Ms Basic has pleaded not guilty to war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war at the start of her trial, including a charge that she killed a prisoner.

"This person was not me," she told the court on Friday, her voice trembling.

"I swear before God and that's all," she added, as Slavisa Djuras, the son of Blagoje Djuras, the man she allegedly killed, looked on.

Biljana Plavsic, now aged 86, remains the most famous woman war criminal from the former Yugoslavia. The former Bosnian Serb vice-president Biljana Plavsic is also the only one tried before the UN war crimes court in The Hague.

She was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2003 after pleading guilty to crimes against humanity for her leading role in a campaign of persecution against Croats and Muslims during Bosnia's war.

"Women are just as capable of committing crimes," prominent Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulic, told AFP.

That much is clear from her essay on war criminals in the former Yugoslavia titled "They Would Never hurt a Fly".

"A woman in such a position has to be 'better' than men," Ms Drakulic wrote in an essay on Plavsic.

"In the given circumstances it meant taking more radical views."

Ms Drakulic recalled the scientific-racist rhetoric used by Plavsic during Bosnia's war, the kind of ideas the Nazis would not have rejected.

Plavsic, a former biology professor, labelled Bosnian Muslims a "genetic mistake on the Serbian body".

Bosnia's war crimes prosecutors say more cases against women suspects are in the pipeline. According to local media, some 40 women are being investigated for war crimes.

Visnja Acimovic, a 45-year-old Bosnian Serb who now lives in neighbouring Serbia, is one of them.

She is accused of having taken part in the 1992 executions of 37 Muslims in the eastern Bosnian town of Vlasenica, most of them between 15 and 20 years old.

She denied the charges before a Belgrade court in January, and Serbia will not extradite its citizens for trial in Bosnia. They do not trust Bosnian justice, her lawyer Krsto Bobot said.

But not everyone enjoys such protection.

In March, Switzerland extradited Elfeta Veseli, a former member of Bosnian Muslim forces, back to Bosnia.

She is accused of the 1992 murder of a 12-year-old Serb in eastern Bosnia. As his family had fled, the boy returned for a forgotten dog and paid for it with his life.

Ms Veseli's trial has yet to start.

But as well as Ms Basic, the US has also extradited Rasema Handanovic, 44. She had lied about her past as a former member of a special Bosnian Muslim unit.

In 2012 she pleaded guilty to the execution of three civilians and three ethnic Croat prisoners of war in the central Bosnian town of Trusina.

"The order was to do the work at Trusina, so that no one remained alive," she told the court. She was jailed for five and a half years.

"Each of these women had her own personal reason that could explain her sadistic outburst that targeted men in particular," said Bosnian psychologist Ismet Dizdarevic.

While there were fewer women war criminals they were notably cruel "to prove their power among men," he told AFP.

Most of war crimes committed by women took place in a detention context.

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Graduated from the American University of Sharjah

She is the eldest of three brothers and two sisters

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Enjoys travelling, reading and horse riding

 

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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi

From: Dara

To: Team@

Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT

Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East

Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.

Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.

I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.

This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.

It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.

Uber on,

Dara

THE BIO

Favourite holiday destination: Whenever I have any free time I always go back to see my family in Caltra, Galway, it’s the only place I can properly relax.

Favourite film: The Way, starring Martin Sheen. It’s about the Camino de Santiago walk from France to Spain.

Personal motto: If something’s meant for you it won’t pass you by.

CHELSEA SQUAD

Arrizabalaga, Bettinelli, Rudiger, Christensen, Silva, Chalobah, Sarr, Azpilicueta, James, Kenedy, Alonso, Jorginho, Kante, Kovacic, Saul, Barkley, Ziyech, Pulisic, Mount, Hudson-Odoi, Werner, Havertz, Lukaku.