Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic speaks during an interview in Belgrade
Prosecutors have made Serbia’s first arrests of people suspected of carrying out killings in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, The Associated Press has learned — a significant milestone toward healing the wounds of Europe’s worst civilian slaughter since World War II.
Serbian police arrested eight men yesterday who are accused of taking part in the slaughter of more than 1,000 Muslims at a warehouse on the outskirts of Srebrenica, a team of Serbian and Bosnian prosecutors told the AP. Altogether, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the eastern Bosnian enclave by the Serbs in 1995 — the only atrocity in Europe to be labeled genocide by the United Nations since World War II.
Serbian prosecutors said they initially arrested seven suspects in pre-dawn raids at different locations in Serbia, then caught the eighth suspect later yesterday after a manhunt.
Chief Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the AP that all those arrested “are former members of a special brigade of the Bosnian Serb police.”
Serbia in the past has put on trial men who took a group of prisoners away from Srebrenica to be killed. And in 2011 it arrested Ratko Mladic — the warlord who masterminded the slaughter — and sent him to an international criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands. But yesterday’s arrests are Serbia’s first attempt to bring to justice men who got their hands bloody in the killing machine known as the Srebrenica massacre 20 years ago this July.
“It is important to stress that this is the first time that our prosecutor’s office is dealing with the mass killings of civilians and war prisoners in Srebrenica,” Bruno Vekaric, the lead Serb prosecutor in the case, told the AP.
He said Serbia was approaching a key moment in confronting its past.
“We have never dealt with a crime of such proportions,” said Vekaric, Serbia’s deputy War Crimes Prosecutor. “It is very important for Serbia to take a clear position toward Srebrenica through a court process.”
Munira Subasic, head of the Mothers of Srebrenica group, called the arrests “good news.”
“It was time for Serbia to do something,” she said. “This is a message to all criminals who fled and thought they are safe from justice that they can never rest.”
The biggest arrest in the sweep was Nedeljko Milidragovic, the commander dubbed “Nedjo the Butcher,” who went on to become a successful businessman in Serbia, the AP has learned.
More than 100,000 people were killed and millions were left homeless in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war when Bosnian Serbs, supported by neighboring Serbia, rebelled against Bosnia’s declaration of independence from Serb-led Yugoslavia.
The collaboration yesterday by prosecutors from former wartime enemies Serbia and Bosnia — supported by the U.N. war crimes tribunal — is the most important case of judicial teamwork helping to heal the war’s festering wounds.
The arrests follow a December sweep by the same team of prosecutors of 15 suspects in a separate wartime atrocity: a massacre that followed an abduction from a Bosnian train.
Many Serbs still view as heroes their wartime leaders — including Mladic and former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who are on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal — and believe they were victims of a Western plot.
That makes the current campaign to detain the triggermen deeply sensitive. Serbia’s conservative government is allowing the prosecutions to move forward in part because it’s eager to join the European Union. Jovana Gec, Aida Cerkez and Dusan Stojanovic,Srebrenica AP
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