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In legal proceedings concerning war crimes, forensic psychiatry is not concerned with explaining the acts themselves or the moral nature of the accused, but exclusively with assessing their sanity and mental state. However, the question of whether perpetrators of crimes are evil by nature or simply ordinary people influenced by social circumstances and authority remains a key theme that links case law and theoretical explanations.
Author: Zinaida Đelilović
Individual assessment
Numerous war crimes defendants before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina have been examined by Alma Bravo Mehmedbašić, an expert witness and a specialist in neuropsychiatry and a sub-specialist in forensic psychiatry. She states for the Impuls portal that, while all aspects of forensic psychiatry can be discussed in general terms, individual court cases must not be made public.
Each finding, she emphasises, is based exclusively on an individual assessment and the tasks assigned by the court or the prosecution.
She explains that the tasks set by the court or the prosecution are to determine whether the accused suffers from a mental illness and which one, the accused's personality structure, his capacity at the time of commission of the war crimes to understand the significance of the act he is committing and to control his actions, that is, his sanity tempore criminis (at the time of the commission of the offence).
On the other hand, procedural competence refers to the defendant's current state of mental health, i.e., their ability to understand questions they are asked, to participate in their defence, or to cooperate with their lawyer.
Bravo Mehmedbašić states that if, during the assessment, she notes the defendant's current inability to participate in the court proceedings, she records this, as well as everything else she observes during the assessment. An expert may, she adds, recommend treatment, diagnostics, and a re-evaluation of the defendant's ability to participate in the court proceedings.
”Given the passage of time since the war, in practice we encounter perpetrators of war crimes who currently suffer from an organically-based impairment of cognitive functions, and advanced dementia which renders them unfit to stand trial,” states Bravo Mehmedbašić.
According to her, in the majority of war crimes perpetrators, no psychopathology or any specific personality disorder has been recorded by expert assessment.
“We encounter the simulation of mental illness and the aggravation of some psychopathological symptoms. Hannah Arendt described how the greatest atrocities do not necessarily stem from demonic intentions, but often result from the ruthless following of rules, bureaucratic obedience, and the individual's inability to think critically about their actions. Through political ideology, victims are dehumanised, perpetrators follow orders from superiors, and are freed from personal guilt, convinced they are merely carrying out orders,” emphasises Bravo Mehmedbašić.
Hannah Arendt was a philosopher who reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi operative responsible for the deportation of millions of Jews, for The New Yorker in 1961. Based on this experience, in her study Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), she developed the thesis of the ”banality of evil”.
She described Eichmann as an ordinary, faceless bureaucrat who was neither ”perverse nor sadistic,” but ”frighteningly normal”. She concluded that he was not a classic monster, but a person who acted without personal motive, primarily driven by his career within the system.
In doing so, she identified a broader phenomenon: that extreme crimes can be committed through obedience, bureaucratic routine and a lack of critical thought.
Her thesis is echoed by the American historian Christopher Browning, who, based on his research into the Reserve Police Battalion 101, concluded that the mass executions in occupied Poland were carried out by ”ordinary people”, not ideologically indoctrinated monsters. Although their commander offered them the opportunity to refuse to kill, the majority carried on with the executions primarily due to group pressure, careerism and a fear of being ostracised. Browning thus demonstrated how, through gradual desensitisation to violence, committing crimes for ordinary individuals eventually becomes merely a routine ”job”.
Theoretical explanations about ”ordinary people” within brutal systems, however, take on a very different form when one enters the courtroom. In Bosnian case law, confronting perpetrators of war crimes reveals the complex psychological and legal mechanisms that the accused use to avoid facing their guilt. Alma Bravo Mehmedbašić states that these mechanisms include denial of the crime, rationalisation, i.e. justifying it with a ”higher purpose”, and shifting the blame onto subordinates or superiors.
However, case law shows that behind the mask of an ”ordinary man” there often lies a deeper pathology.
“Based on case law, in a certain number of war crimes defendants I have identified personality disorder traits, and even structured personality disorders, such as dissocial, emotionally unstable personality disorder, the impulsive and borderline types, narcissistic personality disorder, mixed personality disorder,” our interlocutor states. She further points out that these profiles are characterised by a lack of empathy and a drive to satisfy their own goals, and that to them, victims are not human beings.
Bravo Mehmedbašić points out that, based on case law and clinical work, human behaviour is a product of genetic predisposition, upbringing and social circumstances.
“Social circumstances can lead a certain number of people to commit evil, if they have a genetic predisposition and a traumatic upbringing, and are mobilised by social circumstances to express aggressive tendencies for which they are predisposed and who have not acquired positive educational principles during their upbringing, which escalates into aggressive behaviour during a war ideology,” she concludes.
The cases of Vasiljević, Kojić…
One of the more striking examples from case law that illustrates the combination of an individual's mental state and a monstrous crime is the case of Mitar Vasiljević, who was convicted by the Hague Tribunal and sentenced to 15 years in prison for crimes committed in Višegrad.
According to a report by the agency Sense, during the proceedings the defence attempted to prove that Vasiljević had suffered from some form of affective psychosis at the critical time and his sanity was first ”considerably reduced”, and he then became ”completely insane”. However, the forensic psychiatrist from Zagreb, the late Dr Vera Folnegović Šmalc, who examined Vasiljević at the request of the prosecution, determined that he had shown no signs of psychotic disorders at the time of the crimes in May and June 1992.
Let us also mention the case of Stanko Kojić, who was sentenced by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to 43 years in prison for crimes against humanity committed in Srebrenica. Defence expert witnesses attempted to prove that the accused had a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, which was refuted by experts engaged by the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to a publicly available report by Detektor, Dr Bravo Mehmedbašić stated at the trial on 25 January 2011 that Kojić did not have schizophrenia and was capable of following the proceedings.
These cases are some of those that indicate that behind the most horrific crimes, it is often not mentally ill individuals, but rather fully conscious actors who, once confronted with justice, actively use legal and psychological denial mechanisms to absolve themselves of moral and criminal responsibility.
The text was co-authored in cooperation with Pro Peace BiH.