Bosnia Hertegovina

Two former Bosnian Serb Army soldiers told the trial of their wartime commander Ratko Mladic that Bosniak forces were responsible for attacking civilians in the besieged capital.

Belgrade prosecutors and police officials working on an investigation into the wartime killings of Bosniaks said that they have been threatened by former Bosnian Serb fighters.

The international court released Ranko Cesic, an ex-policeman jailed for 18 years for ‘depraved’ crimes at a notorious detention camp near Brcko, after he served two-thirds of his sentence.

At the trial of Bosnian Serb ex-soldier Vitomir Rackovic, accused of illegally detaining Bosniaks in the Visegrad area in 1992, witnesses recalled how villagers were seized and mistreated.

Former Bosnian Army soldier Nezir Merdzic was acquitted of killing three Serb civilians in June 1992 due to a lack of evidence against him.

Leftover weapons from the 1992-5 war in Bosnia have started emerging as the flood water recedes – proving that many people kept hold of their arsenals after the conflict ended.

The trial of seven indictees charged with crimes in Kotor-Varos begins with the reading of indictment and presentation of introductory statements by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Defence teams.

Floods and landslides in Bosnia prompted people to put aside ethnic differences and highlighted what is widely seen as a failure of nationalist politics.

The District Court in Banja Luka acquitted Devad Zec of having killed a Serb civilian in Vasiljevici, a hamlet near Kotor Varos.

The trial of Ratko Mladic continued with testimony by Defence witness Branko Radan, who admitted that crimes were committed against Bosniaks and Croats in the Grbavica neighbourhood of Sarajevo, but denied that Serbian authorities deported them.