[JURIST] Two former prison officials were convicted of crimes against humanity [press release] Thursday by the War Crimes Chamber [HRW backgrounder] of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website] for the systematic abuse of non-Serb detainees at the Fo?a Correctional Facility during the Bosnian war [JURIST news archive]. The court sentenced Mitar Raševi? and Savo Todovic [indictment, PDF; ICTY case fact sheet, PDF] to eight and twelve years respectively. Both men were first indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] in 2006, but were transferred [ICTY press release] to Sarajevo later that year. This was the first time that the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina War Crimes Chamber has found suspects guilty of running a joint criminal enterprise.

The War Crimes Chamber was set up to alleviate the caseload of the ICTY, and will continue to hear cases as the ICTY winds down in 2010. IWPR has more.