Bosnia indicts Serb army general over Srebrenica genocide

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – A Bosnian war crimes prosecutor on Tuesday indicted a Bosnian Serb former army general for taking part in the 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, an atrocity described as genocide by two international courts.

Milomir Savcic, 60, is accused of commanding the Bosnian Serb Army headquarters 65 Protection Motorised Regiment, which included a military police battalion, to capture, kill and bury adult Muslim Bosniaks from the U.N.-protected eastern enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Bosnian Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic attacked Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, separated men from women and children, and killed about 8,000 Muslims, who were then buried in mass graves.

The Srebrenica massacre is regarded as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.

Savcic consciously helped Mladic and colonel Ljubisa Beara, as well as other commanders of the Drina Corps and Zvornik Brigade, which executed the massacre, to destroy the Muslim men as an ethnic group in the area, the prosecutor said in a statement.

Both Mladic and Beara were jailed for life over the Srebrenica genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

“Savcic is accused of planning, commanding and supervising the activities … during the capture and detention of several hundred Bosniak men at several locations in the Nova Kasaba area, and their illegal arrest, torture and murder,” the statement said.

“Savcic is accused … of committing the criminal act of helping in genocide,” the statement added.

Savcic, who is not in detention, is the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic’s war veterans’ organization. He holds Bosnian and Serbian citizenship.