Seven Serbs held over 1992 Bosnia killings of Muslims

SARAJEVO: Bosnian police arrested seven ethnic Serbs on Wednesday suspected of taking part in the killings of 44 Muslim civilians at the start of the 1990s war, the prosecutors said.

The seven men, mostly former soldiers, are suspected of having “planned, organised and taken part” in the killings and persecution of Muslim civilians in the area of Sokolac in eastern Bosnia in September 1992, a prosecutors’ statement said.

At the time the Bosnian Serb army attacked the village of Novoseoci, separated women and children from men who were then taken to a rubbish dump where they were shot dead, it said. The victims, including boys under 18 years of age, were buried there while women and children were expelled from the village.

After the crime, a village mosque was destroyed and its debris brought to the dump and thrown over the victims’ remains. The victims, aged between 14 and 82, also include a woman killed during the attack, the prosecutors said. All but one of the victims were exhumed and identified after the 1992-1995 war.

Former Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic, serving a 35-year jail term handed down by a UN court for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, is also a suspect in the case and will be questioned, the statement said.

Another suspect is currently in Canada and his extradition will be sought, it added. Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives.