Bosnia charges policemen over killing prisoners of war

[SARAJEVO] Bosnian prosecutors on Thursday charged four former police officers over the killing of eight ethnic Serb members of the then Yugoslav army at the start of the 1990s war.

The eight Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) soldiers were detained in the Sarajevo suburb of Dobrinja in April 1992 after their vehicle broke down, a prosecutor's office statement said.

They were taken to a downtown Sarajevo park where they were shot dead. Two of the accused participated in the shooting, said the statement.

The victims' bodies were removed from the execution site to cover up the crime and so far only partial remains of two of them have been found, according to the prosecutor's office.

The other two accused "as members of police and security forces ... were informed about the crime or personally witnessed it after which they failed to arrest, process and sanction the perpetrators," it said.

One of the four indicted men, Dragan Vikic, commanded a special Bosnian interior ministry unit. He is considered a symbol of the defence of the Bosnian capital from Serb forces who kept it under a 44-month siege during the 1990s war.

"My hands and those of people whom I commanded are clean," Mr Vikic told Klix.ba website, commenting on the indictment.

The former Yugoslav republic's 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs claimed some 100,000 lives.

AFP