Bosnia prosecution launches new war crimes strategy
05 Sep 2008 15:13:26 GMT Source: Reuters
SARAJEVO, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Bosnia will prioritise the prosecution of those who planned the worst atrocities in the 1992-1995 war rather than taking "forever" to process thousands of outstanding cases, prosecutors said on Friday. Deputy Chief Prosecutor David Schwendiman said there were thousands of war crimes cases waiting to be opened against Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat suspects. Prosecutors said the gravest atrocities were the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims, the mass murders of non-Serbs in detention camps and ethnic cleansing of members of other ethnic groups conducted by all three groups. But the families of victims and detention camp survivors said they feared not all perpetrators would face justice. Schwendiman said: "Nobody is going to be left out. We are just reordering the pieces." "There are so many, we are not going to get everybody but we are going to get as many as we can," he told the survivors after a presentation of a study on the prosecution's new strategy. The local courts are dealing with at least several hundred cases while the state war crimes court has opened about 100 since 2005, when it took over lower-ranking cases from the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. "This is only a drop in the sea," said acting Chief Prosecutor Milorad Barasin. "We are facing enormous work in the future. We have to process many more war crimes suspects." (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
A girl walks past a banner in Tbilisi August 31, 2008. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sent troops and tanks into Georgia this month to stop what he called a genocide against ...
