Balkans

The Hague Tribunal’s chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told BIRN that he was disappointed with slow progress in war crimes investigations transferred from the international court for trial in Bosnia.

Nihad Bojadzic, the former deputy commander of the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar Squad, said that he did not lead a wartime attack on the village of Trusina, where 22 Croats were killed.

The Bosnian State Investigation and Protection Agency arrested Gligor Begovic on suspicion of the torture, sexual abuse and beating of Bosniak civilians at the wartime Batkovic jail camp.

A Bosnian Serb party said the new chief of the country’s Communications Regulatory Agency should be a Serb, but the minister responsible insisted that ethnicity should not be an issue.

The Bosnian state court rejected a request for the retrial of Mendeljev Djuric, who was sentenced to 28 years in prison for assisting the commission of genocide in Srebrenica.

The trial of three former Bosnian Serb fighters was told that at least one of them admitted killing people at a primary school where Bosniaks were detained in Kalinovik in 1992.

Dusan Gavran, head of the country’s centre for removing mines, BHMAC, has been questioned over claims that he misused his public position and was engaged in corruption.

A former detainee said he was repeatedly beaten in captivity by Nedzad Hodzic, one of two Bosniak ex-servicemen accused of wartime crimes on Mount Igman.

Former Bosnian Army serviceman Zehrudin Scuk was sentenced to six years in prison for killing a female civilian in the village of Krkaca near Jablanica in 1993.

The Bosnian State Prosecution, in its closing arguments, called for former Bosnian Army fighter Edin Dzeko to receive a long sentence for crimes committed against Bosnian Croats in Konjic and Jabhlanica in 1993.