At a mock trial, war crimes prosecutors presented survivors' testimony of genocide, hoping such grisly evidence would shame world leaders into arresting Bosnia's most wanted suspects.
Over the past week, the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal heard damaging evidence against two Bosnian Serbs who are accused of some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II.If a three-judge panel decides there is enough evidence to suggest the guilt of Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, it will issue international arrest warrants for them.
But with Western powers reluctant to use force to wrest them from Bosnian Serb-held territory, it's unclear if the warrants would have any impact.
For seven days, judges and journalists were shown the conflict from different vantage points, from the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale through the siege of Sarajevo to the killing fields of Srebrenica.
Karadzic and Mladic kept showing up in the chronicle of videotape, investigators' findings and eyewitness accounts, especially after the Bosnian Serbs overran the U.N. safe area of Srebrenica one year ago.
The so-called Rule 61 hearing was also conducted to alert the international community to the crimes in hopes of persuading nations to go after the two indicted war crimes suspects.
A Rule 61 hearing is not a trial in absentia. It's a hearing for prosecutors to show the judges that there are "reasonable grounds" for believing the accused are guilty.
The defendant's dock was empty during the testimony, since Karadzic and Mladic have refused to surrender. And the NATO-led Implementation Force in Bosnia has said its mission is not to pursue war criminals.
The tribunal apparently thinks that may change.
"It's the first time we've seen such a broad and full picture," tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier said Tuesday. "People on the street now have more understanding of what the tribunal thinks.
"No longer can anyone have any doubts of their involvement," Chartier said.
Three lawyers sent by Karadzic attempted to derail the proceedings with legal motions that the court rejected.
The hearing was the first comprehensive legal view of what prosecutors called genocide - the so-called "ethnic cleansing" committed by Bosnian Serbs during the 44-month conflict. A U.S.-brokered peace accord in November halted the fighting.
One Srebrenica survivor told of a grisly escape from a killing field by playing dead under a pile of executed Muslims.
Identified only as Witness A, he testified that as he peered from under the corpses, he saw Mladic conferring with his officers.
A penitent executioner confessed he was forced to open fire with other soldiers on as many as 1,200 of Srebrenica's Muslim men in one day.
The wartime mayor of Sarajevo testified about civilians slaughtered by Bosnian Serb artillery barrages.
The prosecution introduced as evidence a video showing Karadzic standing with a Russian guest on a hilltop above Sarajevo overseeing the shelling campaign.
The judges saw Karadzic invite the guest to fire a high-powered sniper weapon into the besieged city - and the guest obliged.
The prosecution said both Karadzic and Mladic were "fully aware" that their snipers were killing civilians.
Both leaders have been indicted for their role in atrocities allegedly carried out by their forces, including torture, rape and mass murders of Muslims.
To link Karadzic, prosecutors displayed a paper trail showing he was in firm control of the Bosnian Serb government and supreme commander of Serb forces.
One investigator detailed seven different sites where Mladic appeared in and around Srebrenica after it fell last July.
An estimated 7,000 Muslims refugees from Srebrenica are still missing, and tribunal prosecutors say they were massacred by Mladic's troops.