Legal changes banning the denial of genocide, imposed by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s top international official, caused the Bosnian Serb leadership to threaten to pull out of the country’s tax system, judiciary and army.
Mendeljev Djuric and Petar Mitrovic, who were sentenced for the Srebrenica genocide, were examined before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina by way of the international legal assistance as defense witnesses at the trial for crimes in the village of Kravica conducted before the Higher Court in Belgrade. They denied having any knowledge of the crime in question.
In closing arguments at the trial of wartime police chief Dragomir Vasic, the defence argued that he did not know about a plan to forcibly relocate and kill Bosniak men from Srebrenica in 1995.
A year after the identity of a protected witness in a Srebrenica genocide trial was publicly revealed by media in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, putting his safety at risk, the Bosnian prosecution has not brought any charges.
The Srebrenica Memorial Centre marked the 18th anniversary of its opening by staging an exhibition of personal items that illustrate the suffering of victims and survivors of the 1995 genocide.
Wartime Bosnian Serb Army battalion commander Srecko Acimovic was convicted of assisting the genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995 and sentenced to seven years in prison.
As the former Bosnian Serb military chief, who was convicted of genocide and other wartime crimes by the UN court in June, awaits transfer to prison to serve his life sentence, he is suffering from increasingly poor health, his lawyers said.
Wartime Bosnian Serb police reservist and army officer Rade Garic was sentenced to 20 years in prison for persecuting Bosniaks from the Vlasenica and Srebrenica areas in 1992 and 1995 in a series of crimes including several murders.