Balkans

Former Croatian Defence Forces fighter Zemir Kovacevic is not guilty of killings, looting and the illegal detention of Serb civilians in the village of Sijekovac in 1992, his defence said.

More than two decades since it was burned down in the Bosnian Serb siege of the city, the Vijecnica, or City Hall, is preparing to reopen this summer.

The mass murders of Bosniaks from Srebrenica were committed as a result of a “command from the top”, the genocide trial of former Serb fighter Aleksandar Cvetkovic was told.

No remains of victims from the 1990s war from the Prijedor area have been found at Oborci locality, near Donji Vakuf, after two days of digging.

A Facebook group, featuring half-naked photographs of underage girls from all over former Yugoslavia, and which was shut down, has reappeared.

The Appellate Chamber of the Bosnian State Court sentenced a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, Drazen Mikulic, to a year-and-a-half in prison for crimes against a Bosniak civilian held in the Dretelj camp, near Capljina, in 1993.

President Ivo Josipovic said that many war crimes still remain unprosecuted, sending the wrong message to Croatian society and to future generations. “The message that no crime can remain unpunished is important to future generations and to our society over the next few decades,” Josipovic told a round-table discussion on …

After Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region on Wednesday sought to join Russia, Romania’s President repeated that Romania firmly upholds Moldova’s territorial integrity. As armed clashes worsen in eastern Ukraine, and after parliament in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria on Wednesday formally asked to join Russia, Romania has expressed growing concern …

Amid a tense election campaign in Macedonia, the main opposition party has claimed that the Prime Minister expedited the sale of bank to a shady Serbian businessman for a hefty bribe. Macedonia’s opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM, has accused Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of selling Makedonska Banka AD to a …

Four years after official Pristina and Podgorica established diplomatic relations, Kosovo has finally appointed a diplomatic representative in Montenegro. Jafer Ahmeti will take up his office as Kosovo’s charge d’affaires in Montenegro on Thursday. Speaking on Wednesday, he said opening diplomatic missions in Podgorica and Pristina would further intensify the …