Biljana Plavšić Biljana Plavšić ( Serbian Cyrillic : Биљана Плавшић ; born 7 July 1930 ) is a former president of Republika Srpska and convicted war criminal . She is the highest ranking Bosnian Serb politician to be sentenced . She was indicted in 2001 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ( ICTY ) for war crimes committed during the Bosnian war . She plea bargained with the ICTY and only served two - thirds of her sentence in Sweden and was released 27 October 2009 . Before her political engagements , she taught biology at the University of Sarajevo . Academic career . Plavšić was a university professor teaching biology at the University of Sarajevo and acted as Head of Department of Biology . She is a Fulbright Scholar , and as such she spent two years at Boyce - Thompson institute at Cornell University in New York doing botany research . She then specialized in electron microscopy in London , and plant virology in Prague and Bari . A highly accomplished scientist , she published over one hundred scientific works and papers which have been widely cited in scholarly literature and textbooks . On 28 October 2009 , Plavšić was stripped of her degree by the University of Sarajevo . Political career . Plavšić was a member of the Serbian Democratic Party ( SDS ) . She was the first female member of the Presidency of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina , serving from 18 November 1990 until April 1992 after having been elected in the first multi - party elections in 1990 in Bosnia and Herzegovina . From 28 February 1992 to 12 May 1992 , Plavšić became one of the two acting president s of the self - proclaimed Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina . Thereafter she became one of two Vice - presidents of the Republika Srpska and from circa 30 November 1992 she was a member of the Supreme Command of the armed forces of the Republika Srpska . Plavšić was infamous for some of her comments during the war and for her 1992 widely circulated photograph that shows her stepping over the body of a dead Muslim civilian to kiss Željko Ražnatović . Plavšić declared that " six million Serbs can die so that the remaining six million can live in freedom " and considered the ethnic cleansing carried out against non - Serbs during the war to be a " natural phenomenon " . In July 1993 , in a statement to " Borba " , Plavšić reportedly claimed that Bosnian Serbs are ethnically - racially superior to Bosnian Muslims and claimed that : " The Serbs in Bosnia , particularly in the border areas , have developed a keen ability to sense danger to the whole nation and have developed a defense mechanism . In my family they used to say that the Serbs in Bosnia were much better than Serbs in Serbia [ . . . ] and remember , the defense mechanism was not created through a short period of time ; it take decades , centuries [ . . . ] I am a biologist and I know : most capable of adapting and surviving are those species that live close to other species from whom they are endangered . " In 1994 Plavšić stated that she and other Serbian nationalists were unable to negotiate with the Bosnian Muslims due to genetics : " It was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam . And now , of course , with each successive generation it simply becomes concentrated . It gets worse and worse . it simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking , which is rooted in their genes . And through the centuries , the genes degraded further . " This statement by Plavšić , which equated a specific ethnic group with a disease or illness , has been compared to how the Nazi s identified the Jews . Serbian President Slobodan Milošević ' s support for the " Vance Owen Plan " caused her to refuse to shake his hand , as she denounced him as a traitor to the Serbian nation . Vojislav Šešelj testified that " her positions were extreme , very extreme . She was popularly known as the Serbian Empress because of this extremism of hers . " The Dayton Agreement , signed in 1995 , banned the then President of Republika Srpska Radovan Karadžić from office and Plavšić was chosen to run as the SDS candidate for President of the Republika Srpska for a two - year mandate . Vojislav Šešelj , at the Milošević trial , described Karadžić ' s motives for nominating her . " She held very extremist positions during the war , insufferably extremist , even for me , and they bothered even me as a declared Serb nationalist . She brought Arkan and his Serb Volunteer Guard to Bijeljina , and she continued to visit him after their activities in Bijeljina and the surrounding area [ . . . ] Radovan Karadzic [ . . . ] believed her to be more extreme than himself in every way . He thought that the Western protagonists who tried eliminate him at any cost would have an even greater problem with her [ . . . ] Radovan Karadzic believed that she would continue to occupy her patriotic positions until the end . However , several months after she was elected , Biljana Plavsic changed her political orientation by 180 degrees under the influence of some Western protagonists and changed her policies completely . " Due to a growing isolation of the Republika Srpska after the peace was signed , she severed her ties with the SDS and formed Srpski narodni savez ( Serbian People ' s Alliance of the Republika Srpska ) , and nominated Milorad Dodik , the then member of the National Assembly of the Republika Srpska whose SNSD party had only two MPs , for Prime Minister . This marked the beginning of political reform in the Republika Srpska and the cooperation with the International Community . She lost the 1998 election to the joint candidate of the SDS and the Serbian Radical Party of the Republika Srpska Nikola Poplašen . She was a candidate of the reform " Sloga " coalition . Her political career was in decline until the release of the indictment by the ICTY , after which it was completely terminated . During her time in prison , she released a book called " Witnessings " ( Svjedočenja ) , revealing many aspects of the political life of the war - time Republika Srpska and casting an especially dark shadow on the then President of the Republika Srpska Karadžić , another ICTY indictee . In 1998 , Plavšić rewarded Momčilo Đujić , a Chetnik commander and collaborator , with an honorary award . ICTY indictment and sentence . She was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia together with Momčilo Krajišnik and Radovan Karadžić for the " creation of impossible conditions of life , persecution and terror tactics in order to encourage non - Serbs to leave the area , deportation of those reluctant to leave , and the liquidation of others " . The Indictment charged Biljana Plavšić as follows : She voluntarily surrendered to the ICTY on 10 January 2001 , and was provisionally released on 6 September . On 16 December 2002 she plea bargained with the ICTY to enter a guilty plea to one count of crimes against humanity for her part in directing the war and targeting civilians and expressed " full remorse " in exchange for prosecutors dropping seven other war crimes charges , including two counts of genocide . Plavšić ' s statement , read in her native Serbian language , repeated her admission of guilt . It said she had refused to believe stories of atrocities against Bosniaks and Croats and accepted without question the claims that Serbs were fighting for survival . However , in an interview she gave in March 2005 to the Banja Luka Alternativna Television , she admitted she had lied because she couldn ' t prove her innocence , as she was unable to find witnesses who would testify on her behalf . She repeated this in an interview for Swedish " Vi " magazine in January 2009 . She claimed to have plead guilty in order to avoid the remaining charges against her , including genocide . Her pleading guilty led the Hague tribunal to lower her sentence and drop the remaining charges . Plavšić would have likely have been sentenced to 20 – 25 years in prison if she had not plead guilty and all eight charges were taken into account . She was sentenced to 11 years in prison . She served her sentence at the women ' s prison Hinseberg in Frövi , Örebro County , Sweden ( since 26 June 2003 ) . In December 2008 the Swedish Ministry of Justice rejected a request for pardon by Plavšić . She had cited " advancing age , failing health and poor prison conditions " as the reasons for her request . Željko Komšić , a Croat member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina had written a letter to the Swedish authorities in September 2008 urging them not to release Plavšić , stating that " any act of mercy would be big mistake and an insult to the victims and families of the victims " . On 14 September 2009 , Patrick Robinson , President of the United Nations ' International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia , said Plavšić " appears to have demonstrated substantial evidence of rehabilitation " and had accepted responsibility for her crimes . The Times continued that " Under Swedish law , she becomes eligible for release 27 October , after serving two - thirds of her term , though her release date has not been set . " She was released on 27 October 2009 . On the same day , Milorad Dodik , Prime Minister of Republika Srpska , provided an RS government jet to pick up Plavšić and welcomed her to Belgrade after her early release from a Swedish prison . Dodik cited " purely moral reasons " for doing so . On 10 November 2009 , Milorad Dodik revealed that he seriously considered giving Plavšić an office in the Senate . He stated " we are working on revising the law on the President of the Republic , which would award Plavšić , and other former presidents , the opportunity to enjoy some privileges like the office , monetary compensation , counselor , secretary , official car with a driver and so forth . "