[JURIST] The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] on Monday began the trial [press release] of former high ranking Bosnian Serb officials Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin [ICTY materials]. Stanisic, former Bosnian Serb interior minister, and Zupljanin, a former regional police chief, are charged [indictment, PDF] with persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, and torture of non-Serb civilians in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The two are accused of taking part in a criminal enterprise that also included Momcilo Krajisnik, Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic, and Ratko Mladic [JURIST news archives]. Stanisic and Zupljanin allegedly had direct control over the Serbian forces that carried out the plan to eliminate Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Croats, and other non-Serbs from the territory of the planned Serbian state.

A prosecution motion to have the cases of Stanisic and Zupljanin joined was granted in September 2008, and both men pleaded not guilty in November. Zupljanin was arrested in June 2008 by Serbian authorities and transferred [JURIST report] to the ICTY for trial. Stanisic surrendered to the ICTY in March 2005. Stanisic was originally indicted by the ICTY in 2005, and Zupljanin was indicted in 1999.