Balkans

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.

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

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 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.

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.

A three-metre statue of Pope John Paul II was unveiled in Sarajevo at a ceremony attended by thousands of Catholics and other citizens of Sarajevo.

Several opposition parties in Republika Srpska have formed a united ‘Union for Changes’, which aims to take on the governing Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, led by Milorad Dodik, in Bosnia’s upcoming elections.

People in the Brcko District marked the anniversary of the deaths of around 100 civilians who were killed in April 1992 when a bridge over the River Sava was blown up by Serb forces.

Former Bosnian Serb soldiers Bosiljko and Ostoja Markovic have been indicted by the state prosecution for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl in the Kotor Varos area in 1992.