Traumatised War Criminal? Documenting the case of Esad Landžo
Authors: Prof. Richard Alley
DOI: 10.87349/JBUPT/271008
Page No: 187-220
Abstract
Perpetrators voices have been traditionally ignored in transitional justice field and beyond. Esad Landžo was only 19 when he committed the crimes of wilful killing, torturing and causing serious injury to the detainees of notorious Čelebići camp in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2001, Landžo was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the crimes he committed in 1992. After serving two thirds of his sentence in 2006 and settling in Finland, Landžo and the Danish filmmaker, Lars Feldballe Petersen, embarked on a project of making a documentary movie about Landžo's traumatic memories, remorse and regret. Landžo had a strong urge to extend his apology to each victim individually and in 2015 went to Čelebići to meet his former detainees. This paper will build on a scarce conversation in scholarly, and legal discourse, as to why psychological trauma is considered to be an experience that belongs to victims (Mohamed, 2015b). It will analyse difficult and untold perpetrator’s experiences of criminal acts and explore whether in these experiences there is potential for inner and group understanding. The paper draws on author’s interviews with Landžo, the main protagonist in the movie The Unforgiven: A War’s Criminal Remorse; a film that documents the extraordinary story of Landžo: from his denial to redemption.
