Bosnia Charges Serb Over Crimes in Cajnice
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Kornjaca, who is currently residing in Serbia and has Serbian citizenship, was charged on Thursday with taking part in a wide and systematic attack on Bosniak civilians.
He is charged with planning and ordering the persecution of Bosniaks between April and June 1992 through murders, detentions, deportations, forced disappearances and other inhumane acts.
According to the Bosnian prosecution, he committed these crimes as president of the wartime Crisis Committee and later as commander of the Cajnice Serbian municipal wartime headquarters. He was also the president of the Cajnice municipal assembly and a defence minister in the Serbian Autonomous Region of Herzegovina government.
“Kornjaca organized the detention of Bosniaks in various locations in which they were killed and abused, while their property and religious facilities were destroyed,” the indictment says.
According to the charges, Kornjaca coordinated military and police activities that deported the entire non-Serb population of Cajnice.
The indictment has been forwarded to the Bosnian court for confirmation.
The Bosnian prosecution did to answer questions from BIRN about whether Kornjaca will be available for prosecution, as he resides in Serbia, which does not extradite its citizens to Bosnia and Herzegovina for war crimes investigations.
The Bosnian prosecution said it “plans significant cooperation with the Serbian judiciary and prosecution”.
The Bosnian and Serbian state-level prosecutions signed a protocol on cooperation in war crimes investigations in 2013, which allows them to transfer cases between the two states when defendants are unavailable.
