A Serb general accused of sniping and shelling against the civilian population of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war pleaded not guilty before the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia today.
Gen Dragomir Milosevic, who arrived in the Hague on December 3rd after surrendering to the tribunal, pleaded not guilty to four counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of violations of the laws and customs of war in his initial appearance.
Gen Milosevic - no relation of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial in The Hague for genocide - had been on a list of 19 indictees still at large. He was not among the top five, who include Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, Ratko Mladic.
He was commander of the Bosnian Serb army's Sarajevo Romanija Corps, which according to the 1998 indictment, shelled the Bosnian capital from the heights above "with the intention to kill, maim, wound and terrorise".
Sarajevo, lying in a bowl surrounded by mountains, was almost ringed by Serb guns during a 43-month siege that claimed 10,500 lives, including 1,800 children, and became a symbol of wartime suffering in Bosnia.
Some 50,000 people were injured during the siege, punctuated by atrocities including mortar attacks on crowded markets and shooting at children playing in the streets.
Another commander of the Romanija Corps, Stanislav Galic, was tried at The Hague last year and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors at his trial said Bosnian Serb forces had plunged the city into a "medieval hell".