Balkans

A witness told the trial of ex-fighter Nikola Maric, accused of the detention, persecution and killing of Bosniaks in the Prozor area, that he saw the defendant shoot a fellow prisoner.

Dysfunctional governments in Balkan countries continue to drive down democracy ratings in the region, according to Freedom Houses’s latest study, ‘Nations in Transit 2014’.

Five former Bosnian Serb policemen were given reduced sentences of 20 years each for aiding genocide in Srebrenica following a retrial after their previous convictions were annulled.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci and his main rival, Ramush Haradinaj, remain in deadock over who has the right to form a new government following inconclusive general elections.

The bodies were exhumed after the recent floods that devastated the country washed up bones suspected to be those of Bosniaks killed during the 1992-95 war near Doboj.

Protesters rallied in front of the cathedral in Zagreb against Catholic bishops’ alleged ‘glorification’ of the homecoming of recently-released Bosnian Croat war criminal Dario Kordic.

A man was arrested for he allegedly stabbing an anonymous protected witness in the trial of former Bosnian Serb fighter Dragan Sekaric, who is accused of a series of wartime atrocities.

The unveiling of portraits of Gavrilo Princip and Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the exterior of the Sarajevo Museum mark the start of a series of events commemorating the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.

Serbian experts will examine the site of another suspected mass grave near the town of Raska, where the bodies of 37 Kosovo Albanians killed during wartime have already been found.

With elections approaching on Sunday, authorities in Pristina have increased measures in order to prevent poll fraud.