Four Bosnian Muslims arrested for war crimes

FOUR BOSNIAN Muslims have been arrested in connection with the murder of more than 20 ethnic-Croats during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, while in Sarajevo, demonstrators protested against recent decisions made by the United Nations war crimes court in The Hague.

Bosnia’s state prosecutor said the four men had been arrested in different locations around the country, on suspicion of involvement in killings that took place in April 1993, during an attack on the village of Trusina by the Bosnian-Muslim army and a special platoon called “Zulfikar”.

“The members of these units killed 19 civilians and three Croat soldiers, who had given themselves in earlier, as well as wounding four civilians, of whom two were children aged two and four,” the prosecutor’s office said.

“They are arrested on suspicion that they committed the criminal offence of crimes against civilians and prisoners of war and violating the laws and practices of warfare.”

The men are expected to be tried by Bosnia’s state war crimes court, which handles less serious cases and tries lower-profile defendants from Bosnia’s 1992- 1995 war, in which Muslims and Croats initially fought together against Serb forces before turning on each other.

The biggest war crimes cases from the conflict are dealt with by the UN court at The Hague, which this week decided to release Biljana Plavsic, a former Bosnian Serb president, after she served only two-thirds of an 11-year sentence for persecuting Muslims during the conflict.

Ms Plavsic (79), who was an associate of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, pleaded guilty in 2003 to persecution on racial and religious grounds and was convicted of war crimes – the highest-ranking former Yugoslav official to admit responsibility for atrocities.

However the UN court ruled on Tuesday that she should be freed from a Swedish prison because of her good behaviour and apparent rehabilitation.

Relatives of some of the approximately 200,000 people who died in the war, including the 8,000 Muslim men and boys massacred at Srebrenica, condemned the decision and about 200 protested against it in Sarajevo yesterday.

They also burned pictures of Karadzic and judges at the UN court, who want prosecutors to narrow the scope of the indictment against the ex-Bosnian Serb leader to ensure a shorter trial.

Bosnia is still sharply divided along ethnic lines. The country’s top international envoy, Valentin Inzko, condemned Bosnian Serb premier Milorad Dodik yesterday for claiming that several infamous wartime atrocities were actually staged to discredit Serbs.