The verdicts, along with five other war crimes convictions, concluded an almost four-year trial in which many witnesses spoke, at times in horrifying detail, of the Serbian capture of the United Nations protected enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa that held tens of thousand of Bosnian Muslim refugees.  The military operation ended with the deportation of thousands of women and children and the execution of close to 8,000 captive men and boys.  Although the United Nations war crimes tribunal has convicted more than a dozen people of crimes committed in Srebrenica, it has only once before issued a conviction of genocide. And that ruling, against Gen. Radislav Krstic, was lessened on appeal to “aiding and abetting genocide.”  Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb political leader, is currently being tried on charges of genocide, as is Zdravko Tolimir, a senior intelligence official.  But the man widely considered to be the chief planner and organizer of the massacre, Gen. Ratko Mladic, is still a fugitive. And Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Serbia and the architect of the war, died in 2006 while his trial was under way.  The two defendants convicted of genocide on Thursday were Lt. Col. Vujadin Popovic, 53, and Col. Ljubisa Beara, 70.  Colonel Popovic, chief of security of the Drina Corps, was one of the central figures who helped to plan and organize the killing operation, separating men, organizing convoys and showing up at the major killing sites, the judges said.  “He was entrenched” in the operation and “participated with resolve,” they wrote.  His “robust participation in all aspects of the plan demonstrates that he not only knew of the intent to destroy” the group, but that “he also shared it,” the panel said.  Colonel Beara, chief of security of the army main staff, ranked above Colonel Popovic. As the most senior security officer, “He had the clearest overall picture of the massive scale and scope of the killing operation,” the judges said. He organized logistics and became the massacre’s “driving force.” He located detention and execution sites and recruited people to help with the killing and the digging of mass graves, court documents said.  A third Bosnian Serb Army officer, Drago Nikolic, 52, was found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide and sentenced to 35 years.  The four other defendants were convicted of crimes against humanity and other wartime atrocities. Among them were two generals: Radivoje Miletic, 62, who was sentenced to 19 years, and Milan Gvero, 72, who received a five-year prison term. Vinko Pandurevic, 50, a brigade commander, got 13 years, and Ljubomir Borovcanin, 50, a police commander, was sentenced to 17 years.  Genocide has proved difficult to prosecute. The concept, as defined in the 1948 United Nations resolution establishing the crime, goes beyond mass murder, requiring proof of “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”  The three-judge panel at The Hague ruled that the definition had been met.  “The scale and nature of the murder operation, with the staggering number of killings, the systematic and organized manner in which it was carried out, the targeting and relentless pursuit of the victims, and the plain intention — apparent from the evidence — to eliminate every Bosnian Muslim male who was captured or surrendered proves beyond reasonable doubt that this was genocide,” the judges wrote.  The genocide finding is likely to have an impact well beyond this trial. In Bosnia, Zumra Sehemerovic, who represents an association of massacre survivors, said the recognition of the crime was essential to the victims.  “We are satisfied that they have been jailed for life for genocide,” she said.  In Serbia and Bosnia, many still deny or minimize the magnitude of the killings at Srebrenica and of the role of both the Serbian and Bosnian Serb leadership in the planning and final capture of the United Nations protected zones.  During the 1992-5 Bosnian war, in which all sides used disinformation and propaganda, Serbs were not told that the Bosnian Serb Army and militarized police were on Serbia’s payroll and that the Belgrade government of Mr. Milosevic provided equipment and sent the military, the special police, mercenaries and intelligence specialists to Bosnia.  The Thursday hearing, with its seven defendants lined up in two rows in the dock behind a flock of lawyers, concluded the largest group trial held at the tribunal. Its dramatic end came when the presiding judge, Carmel A. Agius of Malta, finished a long summary of what he called the “horrific crimes” of July 1995, “arrestive in their scale and brutality,” and he asked the accused to stand to hear their sentences.  He then delivered the harshest judgments ever handed down by the tribunal.  Colonel Beara, described as “the driving force” of the weeklong killing operation, listened impassively as he heard his life sentence read out.  Colonel Popovic, hearing the judge say he was a central and ubiquitous figure who knew the intent was to kill as many men as possible, shook his head in denial several times. It was not clear whether any of the defendants planned to appeal.
A three-year trial came to an end at The Hague as the tribunal there found two of seven Bosnian Serb defendants guilty of genocide.