Topic: Biljana Plavsic

Biljana Plavšić (Serbian Cyrillic: Биљана Плавшић) (b. 7 July 1930, Tuzla, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, now Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a former Bosnian Serb politician and university professor currently serving a sentence in Sweden as a result of a conviction by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes. She was the president of Republika Srpska for two years from 1996 through 1998.

She was indicted in 2001 by the ICTY for war crimes committed during the war in Bosnia. She plea bargained with the ICTY. Before her political engagements, she taught biology at the University of Sarajevo.

In 1992, a widely-circulated photographed showed her stepping over the body of a dead Muslim civilian to kiss the notorious Serb warlord Željko Ražnatović, known as Arkan. Besides being the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb politician to be sentenced, she was also known for her fiery nationalist statements during the War in Bosnia, against the SDS, and, later, her remorse for the crimes against humanity she admitted to have been responsible for as a high-level politician.