Two Bosnian Serbs Indicted Over Wartime Killings
December 02, 2008
SARAJEVO (Reuters) -- Bosnia's war crimes prosecutors have indicted two Bosnian Serb ex-soldiers for killing and wounding dozens of Muslim civilians early in the 1992-95 war.
Jovo Jandric, 54, and Slobodan Pekez, 51, served in the Bosnian Serb Army that carried out ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks, and Croats.
"The accused are suspected of taking part in the killings and intentional infliction of physical and psychological pain, physical injuries, and robbery," the prosecutor's office said in a statement. "They are suspected of committing war crimes against the civilian population."
The men are accused of illegally forcing the Bosniak population out of their homes in a village near the town of Jajce in September 1992, detaining men, women, and children and taking valuables.
"Then they took them to the place...where they ordered them to get in line by the edge of an abyss...and fired bursts at them from machine guns," the statement said.
Along with other members of an organized group, the two men killed 23 Bosniaks and wounded several more, it added.
The Bosnian war crimes court was set up in 2005 to relieve the burden on the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.