Serbs jailed over videotaped Muslim killings

[sonz]

A Serbian war crimes court on Tuesday found four former Serb paramilitaries guilty for taking part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys.

The sentences for the men, all members of the notorious Scorpions paramilitary group, ranged from 5 years to 20 years. One defendant was acquitted.

The trial, which began in November 2005, is the first in Serbia to deal with the horrible massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia's wartime UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica, considered the single worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

The paramilitaries were charged after the release of a shocking video showing six Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica being shot dead in the Bosnian village of Trnovo on July 17, 1995.

The Muslim victims, wearing plain clothes with their hands tied behind their backs, were seen being taunted in the video.

The paramilitaries, seen smoking and chatting casually, then ordered the men to lie with their face down in a roadside ditch and shot them in the back.

The video, found by a Serb human rights activist, was broadcast in Serbia in 2005, shocking many Serbs who had questioned whether the Srebrenica massacre had really taken place.

“War crime”

"The defendants are guilty ... of killing six prisoners of Muslim origin," said judge Gordana Bozilovic-Petrovic, announcing the verdict, adding that it was a war crime against a civilian population.

Prosecutors had sought prison terms of up to 40 years, the maximum sentence available under Serbia's legal system where the death penalty was abolished in 2001.

The longest sentences of 20 years were given to the former commander of the "Scorpions" unit, Slobodan Medic, and his main accomplice, Branislav Medic, who “ordered the three defendants and two others to execute the prisoners, take them away from the site and make it seem as if they had been killed in conflict”, according to the judge’s ruling.

Pera Petrasevic, the only defendant to have confessed to the crime, was given 13 years. Another accomplice, Aleksandar Medic, was given five years.

The fifth defendant, Aleksandar Vukov, was cleared of the charges "as there had been no evidence presented that he had committed the pre-meditated crime," the judge said.

More than 30 family members of the victims have traveled from Bosnia to Belgrade to hear the verdict.

"Whatever the ruling, my child is not here," Nura Alispahic, the mother of a 16-year-old victim, told reporters before the verdict was issued.

"These people will leave jail one day, but my child will never come out of the ground."

Serbia's special war crimes court was created in 2003. It deals with lesser crimes referred to Serbia by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which is based in The Hague.

-- AJP and Agencies