lecture hall, high ceilinged and austere. The judges’ wood-paneled benches were centered on the wall opposite the glass barrier. Similar paneled benches, one for the defense, the other for the prosecution, were at right angles to the judges’ benches.
As we watched, Anna and her attorneys entered the main chamber. Anna had shed her coat. She was wearing a subtle plaid suit with a white blouse, and her chestnut hair was cut to shoulder length again. There was no sign of the tears or the tremors I’d seen just a few minutes before. As I watched, she pulled her hair back behind her ears, plainly showing the burn scar on her face.
I clapped on my headphones and listened to the court officer’s speech regarding the proceedings and the rules of decorum. He spoke in English, but his speech was translated into any of six official languages at the touch of a switch.
He called the court to order, and we were asked to rise.
A hundred people in the gallery and another fifty in the courtroom got to their feet as the judges arrived through a side door. Nine men and women, wearing dark-blue robes with royal-blue trim and stiff white jabots at their throats, took their seats at the benches.
The principal judge, Alain Bouchard, took the elevated seat at the center of the back row. He had black skin and white hair and looked to be in his late fifties. I’d read about him: he was a criminal court judge in his home country of Belgium, with a background in criminal defense.
Bouchard exchanged a few whispered words with his colleagues, then spoke to the bailiff, saying, “Please bring in the prisoner.”
CHAPTER 116
I thought I was prepared to see him, but when the side door opened and Slobodan Petrović was escorted by guards into the courtroom, I felt sick.
Tunnel vision, light-headedness, dropping-through-the-floor sick.
Joe gripped my arm. “You okay?”
“Uh-huh. I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I was enraged.
When I looked at Petrović, I saw his gun pointed at my face. I had other images in my mind, ones I’d absorbed from hearing Susan’s tearful rendering of rapes and beatings. I thought about meeting Anna that first time when she was semiconscious in the ICU. And I would never, ever forget the mutilated bodies of Carly Myers and Adele Saran.
Petrović had done all of that and much more. And he hadn’t paid for any of it.
I’d relied on the ICC to return Petrović to his cement-block sarcophagus. My mind had rested on that image of him, a cockroach in a block of concrete.
Seeing him on his feet, well dressed, put a new picture in my head. I saw the clever, undefeated military officer who might have found another loophole. By the end of the day, he might get released for time served.
Petrović smiled at the judges as he passed the benches, before taking his place in the dock.
Joe took my hand, and together we stared at the master killer who had once been our focused obsession. Petrović looked much as he had when we’d seen him last. Yes, his hair was grayer, and he’d lost weight. But he still looked like Tony Branko in a good blue suit, a white shirt with a tie.
There was a buzz in the gallery, exclamations in many languages, muffled sobs, and his name, a sound like clearing one’s throat. Petrović.
I’d researched the trials of Serbian war criminals before coming to The Hague. I knew that over the last four months this court had heard appeals from seven previously convicted former top-level officers of the wartime Serbian Army, all of whom had been betrayed by Petrović.
Six of the seven appeals had been rejected. One sentence had been reduced, owing to an error made at trial.
Today was Slobodan Petrović’s turn.
I looked at him standing in the dock, his face radiant with confidence. I quickly switched my eyes across the room to Anna Sotovina. She looked resolute.
I thought that Petrović and Anna were evenly matched.
Judge Bouchard spoke, saying, “Slobodan Petrović, you were formerly a colonel in the army of Republika Srpska. When you were tried, you were found guilty of killing, and ordering your troops to kill, over fifteen hundred civilians—men, women, and children—in Djoba, Bosnia. In addition, it was proven that prisoners were tortured and raped before execution. Afterward they were buried in mass graves.”
“Your Honor—” Petrović said.
Bouchard cut him off. “I will let you know when it is your turn to speak.”
Judge Bouchard summarized Petrović’s testimony against his superiors, and his reward,