The state prosecutor of Bosnia has indicted a former Serb police commander for taking part in what has been described as Europe's worst massacre since World War 2.   He has been brought to Sarajevo where he is due to go on trial at the Bosnian war crimes court.  Nedjo Ikonic allegedly oversaw the massive killings and detentions of Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995.

The office of Bosnian Prosecutor Milorad Barasin announced on March 13 2010 that it is convinced that the 45-year-old Ikonic supported the Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslims during the Bosnian war of the 1990s. 

He had been in detention since his extradition to Bosnia in January from the United States, where he had been arrested on an international arrest warrant.

The prosecutor's office said that as a commander of a special police unit, Ikonic is now officially charged with "taking part in a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to kill men and boys."   

He allegedly detained Muslims who tried to escape the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica through the woods. The prosecutor's office said Ikonic personally ordered, oversaw and supported the execution of over 1000 Muslims who were held in a nearby village.

These killings took place after Srebrenica, which was a United Nations-protected safe zone, fell into the hands of Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.

But former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, who is on trial in the Hague for his alleged involvement in the mass killings and other war crimes, has denied the Srebrenica massacre took place.

Former president Karadzic told the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia last week that Muslims had been lying. Radovan Karadzic said "Muslims have created a place of worship" in Srebrenica. He described the massacre as "a myth". He added that there are names of over 8000 dead engraved in Srebrenica, although, he said, no more than roughly 2500 people could have been buried there.

The former Serbian leader also suggested that Muslim human remains  were brought from far away to Srebrenica to fabricate the figures. He said he hopes he will not be punished over the killing of, in his words, "a few Muslims" by Serbs.

Survivors of what has been viewed as Europe's worst single atrocity since the Holocaust hope Radovan Karadzic, and others, will be punished soon.

They say "He makes again a circus from this court. How long can this manipulation continue?" 
 
The Bosnian war crimes court was set up in 2005 to relieve the burden on the Hague-based tribunal and speed up prosecutions. It has put dozens of Bosnian Serbs on trial over Srebrenica. Twelve have been jailed, seven acquitted and seven are still being tried.

However former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, whose forces allegedly carried out the massacre, remains at large.

From London, Jennifer Glasse of Voice of America reported that Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic, speaking in London, said that Serbia's controversial effort to extradite one of his predecessors for alleged war crimes is damaging the relationship between the two countries. Former Bosnian President Ejup Ganic was jailed on a Serbian extradition request last week and released on bail Thursday.

"We've been trying lately to improve our relations, Bosnia Herzegovina and Serbia, but this is a setback and all the gains in improving those relations is practically reversed," President Silajdzic said. "We shall need now more time to make these relations normal."

Bosnia and Serbia fought a bloody war in the early 1990s during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.  Serbian authorities have accused former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic of war crimes in 1992 at the start of the war.  Mr. Ganic, who was arrested last week in London, has denied the Serbian charges, which were previously rejected by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague.   Thursday, a British court ordered Mr. Ganic released on bail.

Mr. Silajdzic says the Serbs are trying to change perceptions about what happened during the Bosnian war, which cost the lives of an estimated 100,000 people, most of them Bosnian civilians.

"We would like to have normal, neighborly relations with Serbia, but they continue to provoke Bosnia Herzegovina, minimize their role, rehabilitate the perpetrators and demonize the victims, rewrite history, revise recent history," he said.

Mr. Silajdzic says he does not know whether all of the Serbian government supports the plan to request Ganic's extradition, but he says some in Serbia still adhere to the vision former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic had for a greater Serbia, that included part of what is now Bosnia Herzegovina.

"The problem is the hardliners, or those who still believe in an ideology and still believe in Milosevic's project despite the fact that that project was defeated not only politically and militarily but also morally," he said.

Mr. Silajdzic also met with Britain's foreign Secretary David Miliband to discuss complaints about Mr. Ganic's treatment in Britain.

"Mr. Ganic - was the least to say - mistreated after the arrest," Mr. Silajdzic said.

Bosnian officials say Mr. Ganic, who is now an academic, was not granted consular access for three days and President Silajdzic says there were other concerns.

"He did not have for three or four day access to telephone, and he had problems even with his medicine at treating the high blood pressure," he said. "That is a contravention, clear contravention of the European convention. And, I said that I believe that an apology is in order so that the citizens of Bosnia Herzegovina  will know that our relations are normal, that this was an aberration in  otherwise  good and friendly relation that we have with this country."

Miliband said he would investigate the complaints. On March 25, Mr. Ganic's lawyers are expected to try to have the case thrown out for lack of evidence. If that fails, Mr. Ganic is scheduled to appear in court April 13 when Serbia will lay out its case for extradition.

Meanwhile, Serbian police have detained nine former paramilitary fighters suspected of killing civilians and looting homes during the war in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

The nine are accused of killing 41 ethnic Albanians in the village of Cuska in 1999. 

Serbia's government has been trying to address the atrocities of the Balkan wars as it seeks membership in the European Union.

Source: Voice of America