This Article is From Dec 15, 2015

Bosnia Arrests And Charges Ethnic Serbs Over Srebrenica Massacre

Bosnia Arrests And Charges Ethnic Serbs Over Srebrenica Massacre

Bosnian woman Raza Graljevic, 69, from Srebrenica, who is searchimg for remains of her brothers, reacts as she looks at the human remains at the mass grave in the village of Kozluk. (AP Photo)

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosnia today arrested a former ethnic Serb police commander suspected of taking part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and charged a former Serb army officer over the atrocity.

Former police commander Milan Bogdanovic was arrested under suspicion of  having participated in a "joint criminal enterprise" that resulted in the summary execution of some 8,000 men and boys and the deportation of 40,000 Muslim civilians from the Srebrenica enclave, a war crimes prosecutors statement said.

During the massacre, Bogdanovic, now 65, commanded a police unit tasked with arresting Muslims fleeing Srebrenica to escape advancing Serb forces.

These people were first gathered on the lawn of a stadium in Nova Kasaba, near Srebrenica, the statement said.

"Then, some 500 people were handed over to military police and taken to the execution sites."

Members of Bogdanovic's unit also "participated in the executions and burial (in mass graves) of dozens of detainees," it said.

Meanwhile, the prosecutors charged Srecko Acimovic for his alleged involvement in the execution of more than a thousand Srebrenica massacre victims.

Acimovic, 48, was long considered one of few Bosnian Serb officers who had refused to take part in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

The then commander of the 2nd battalion of the notorious Bosnian Serb Zvornik Brigade, Acimovic was on several occasions summoned by a UN war crimes tribunal to testify against Serb officers, including wartime army chief Ratko Mladic.

Acimovic, arrested on December 1, was charged with having participated in the execution of "at least 1,040 men and boys," the prosecution said.

The crimes were committed from July 14-16, 1995 at a gravel pit near Kozluk, a village some 70 kilometres (40 miles) north of Srebrenica.

Acimovic "assured" trucks to transport the detainees and personally selected the place of their execution, prosecutors said. A new mass grave was discovered in early December near the place of the executions.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the days after Srebrenica fell to Serb forces on July 11, 1995. So far the remains of some 6,600 of the massacre victims have ben exhumed, identified and reburied, most in a memorial centre near the ill-fated town.

Bosnia's 1992-1995 war claimed some 100,000 lives. Srebrenica atrocity has been labelled genocide by two international courts.
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