Description
Post-conflict states increasingly hold domestic war crimes trials. But do they prosecute perpetrators fairly? Applying statistical modeling and quantitative text analysis to two original datasets based on 555 decisions delivered to Serb and non-Serb defendants in Serbia’s war crimes trials (1999--2019), we do not find evidence of ethnic bias but demonstrate conflict actor bias. Paramilitaries received harsher sentences than state agents of violence, such as army members, from the same ethnic group for the same offenses. Additionally, we show that bias manifests in the verdicts’ textual content. Paramilitary violence is depicted more extensively and with greater detail than crimes committed by state actors. We demonstrate how deniability of accountability, which incentivizes government collusion with paramilitaries during conflict, operates after conflict. A state cannot completely avoid criminal responsibility given the global norm of accountability. Nonetheless, it can use domestic prosecutions to minimize state wrongdoing by associating egregious violence with paramilitaries.
