Families Distressed by 15-Year Probe into Bosnian War Deaths

While leading the breakaway statelet, Abdic fought against fellow Bosniaks who were loyal to the Sarajevo government. He was later convicted of war crimes, but was elected mayor of Velika Kladusa in 2016 after his release.

Nihada Horozovic is the sister of one of the prisoners of war who was allegedly killed by Abdic's forces - Elfad Horozovic, who was a military policeman with the 506th Brigade of the Bosnian Army's Fifth Corps.

Horozovic said that the group of captives, including her brother, was first tortured.

On the basis of witnesses' statements and autopsy findings, it was determined that the torture was extreme and prolonged.

Horozovic said that this included "beating, cutting off body parts, and pouring on acid, starving them and then leaving them like that for a while".

"Then they would come back and do the same again in order to extract information about military operations and the Fifth Corps' positions," she added.

According to witnesses' testimonies, the witnesses were then killed and dumped in a corn field in Maljevac.

"At the end of the torture and agony, they were killed from short range by two bullets fired at each of them from a handgun, as the autopsy has showed. It turned out that the person who killed them, who fired the last bullet into their foreheads, put an end to the torment, as can be seen in the photographs [from the autopsy]," Horozovic said.

The victims' remains were found in Cetingrad in Croatia in 2003.

Their families said they resent what they see at prosecutors' inaction in the case. They claim that prosecutor Nazif Felic, who previously conducted the investigation, said that it would be considered a priority. But a second prosecutor, Adnan Kapic, who took over the case at the...