Serbia court orders detention of 8 suspects for Srebrenica massacre News
Serbia court orders detention of 8 suspects for Srebrenica massacre

[JURIST] A Belgrade court on Friday ordered a 30-day detention of eight Serbian suspects in connection with the 1995 Srebenica massacre [BBC backgrounder], in which some 8,000 Serbian Muslim men and boys were killed in a single town. The Belgrade Higher Court said the suspects must remain in jail due to concerns that they may flee or pressure witnesses. The 8 men were arrested Wednesday, and are accused of participating in the massacre [AP report] of 1,300 people at a warehouse outside the Bosnian town of Srebenica during the 1992-95 civil war. The arrests, carried out by Serbia’s War Crimes Prosecutor’s office, have sparked outrage among Serbia’s right-wing nationalists. The arrests mark Serbia’s first attempt to handle the mass murders, but right-wing nationalists call the arrests anti-Serb. Many Serbs consider wartime Serb leaders as national heroes, and prosecutions for war crimes remain a sensitive issue. The Srebenica massacre is Europe’s only designated genocide since World War II.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website; JURIST backgrounder] and the Balkan States continue to prosecute those accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Balkan conflict of the 1990s that left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced. The International Court of Justice [official website] ruled in February that Serbia and Croatia did not commit genocide against one another’s citizens during the 1990s wars that erupted after the division of Yugoslavia. In January the ICTY upheld [JURIST report] the genocide convictions of two Bosnian Serbs during the 1995 Srebenica massacre. In July a Dutch court found the government responsible for 300 deaths [JURIST report] in the Srebrenica massacre. In January 2014 the appeals chamber for the ICTY upheld [JURIST report] the criminal convictions of four Serbian senior officials stemming from the Bosnian Civil War [JURIST news archive]. The ICTY was created [text, PDF] in 1993 by UN Resolution 827 to adjudicate the alleged war crimes perpetrated in the region of the former Yugoslavia since 1991.

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