Israel and Bosnia Capture Two Bosnian Genocide Suspects

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Bosnia: Two Serbs arrested for Srebrenica genocide 18 January 2011. Bosnian authorities arrested a Bosnian Serb suspected of taking part in a massacre of Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995, and another suspect was arrested in Israel, local media reported on Tuesday. Sarajevo, 18 Jan. (AKI) – Bosnian authorities arrested a Bosnian Serb suspected of taking part in a massacre of Muslims in the eastern town of Srebrenica in 1995, and another suspect was arrested in Israel, local media reported on Tuesday. Bosnia's state prosecutor said that Bozidar Kuvelja, a former Bosnian Serb policeman, was arrested late on Monday in the eastern town of Cajnice. He is suspected of taking part in the killing of scores of Muslim men in Srebrenica in July 1995, when some 8,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries. The massacre at Srebrenica - a United Nations enclave - was the worst atrocity against civilians since World War II. In 2004, in a unanimous ruling, the UN's war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ruled the Srebrenica mass murders and forcible transfer of women, children and the elderly, constituted genocide. As news of Kuvelja's arrest came, Israeli authorities said they had arrested Aleksandar Cvetkovic, 42, also suspected of taking part in the Srebrenica killings. Cvetkovic, whose wife is Jewish, emigrated to Israel in 2006, and Bosnia has asked for his extradition. The UN's Hague-based tribunal has indicted 161 individuals, mostly Serbs, for crimes committed in 1991-1995 war that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. More than sixty have been sentenced to over one thousand years in jail. Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is currently standing trial before the tribunal on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But two more suspects, wartime Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, and Goran Hadzic, a wartime leader of rebel Serbs in Croatia, are still at large. The Hague court has charged Mladic with crimes against humanity, genocide, complicity in genocide and war crimes. Hadzic has been charged with: the murder and persecution of the Croat and non-Serb civilian population; the prolonged imprisonment of civilians in detention facilities where torture, beatings and killing was not uncommon; and the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of non-Serbs from across the area under his control. The Hague tribunal plans to end its work by 2014 and new cases have been passed to local courts.


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