Bosnia Hertegovina

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.

A witness told the war crimes trial of Bosnian Serb ex-soldier Vitomir Rackovic that the defendant took her to the village of Crnca, where she was raped.

A court in Bijeljina sentenced former Bosnian Serb Army officer Velimir Popovic to five years in jail for violently abusing prisoners of war at the Ugljevik detention camp.

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.