Eurasia Press & News

Former Bosnian Croat fighter Zdenko Jakisa was arrested in the US state of Minnesota on suspicion of committing a series of violent crimes against civilians during the 1990s war.

Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic will pay his first official visit to Sarajevo on May 13 – a move seen as a step forward in relations between the two neighbouring countries.

Former fighter Zoran Milic, who was convicted killing four members of a Bosniak family in Busovaca in 1993, had his prison sentence reduced from nine to seven years on appeal.

All war crimes trials must be public, as well as the full names of the perpetrators, while the current practice of ‘anonymisation’ of suspects should end, a conference in Sarajevo heard.

The defence for former Bosnian Army soldier Edin Dzeko, charged with executing six Croats in 1993, said that witnesses who accused him of the killings were lying to avoid prosecution.

Bosnia’s Federation entity has adopted a set of anti-corruption laws, which aim to establish specific law-enforcement bodies tasked with pursuing perpetrators of organised crime.

A hundred years on from the Sarajevo assassination, schools in former Yugoslav countries are teaching different histories about the causes of the 1914-18 war, reflecting more recent conflicts.

The budgets of Bosnia’s two entities face trouble since a planned tranche of money from an IMF stand-by arrangement was blocked.

Nihad Bojadzic, the former deputy commander of the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar Squad, said that he was not told about an attack on the village of Trusina, where 22 Croats were killed.

The trial of seven Bosnian Serbs charged with taking part in murders, illegal detentions, torture and other inhumane acts against Bosniaks and Croats in Kotor Varos will begin this month.