Belgrade Higher Court

Belgrade Higher Court on Friday sentenced Joja Plavanjac to 15 years in prison and Zdravko Narancic to seven years for their roles in the killings of 11 civilian detainees at a prison in Bosanska Krupa in Bosnia on August 3, 1992.

Plavanjac was convicted of killing the prisoners and Narancic of helping him.

The Appeals Court in Belgrade has sentenced two former Bosnian Serb Army military policeman, Dragan Bajic and Marko Paukovic, to 12 years in prison each for killing five Bosniak civilians in the village of Kamicak in the north-wesern Kljuc municipality of Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1992.

Belgrade Higher Court has been waiting since April for the results of tests to determine whether Novak Djukic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army's Ozren Tactical Group, can appear in court, again delaying the long-running proceedings in the case, BIRN has learned.

Witness Alija Handzic told the war crimes trial of Dalibor Maksimovic at Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday how her three brothers were taken away from a house in Sabac, a city in north-western Serbia, in 1992, and never seen alive again.

Witness Zeljko Markanovic, who was also a Bosnian Serb reservist policeman during wartime, told the trial of Milorad Jovanovic at Belgrade Higher Court on Monday that he did not see his colleagues beat up prisoners at the Simo Miljus Museum prison in Lusci Palanka in Bosnia's Sanski Most municipality in the summer of 1992.

Radojko Jesic, who was a passenger on the train that was halted at Strpci station on February 27, 1993 before a subsequent massacre by Serb fighters, told Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday that he saw his Bosniak acquaintance entering the train in the town of Uzice but could not find him again after Strpci.

The prosecution in the trial of former Bosnian Serb Army soldiers Joja Plavanjac and Zdravko Narancic urged Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday to convict both defendants of committing crimes against Bosniak civilian prisoners during the Bosnian war.

Eyewitness Zoran Bogetic told the trial of five Bosnian Serb paramilitaries at Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday that a passenger who was sitting in his train compartment on February 27, 1993 was taken away by two fighters.

Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday convicted Nikola Vida Lujic, a former member of the Special Operations Unit, an elite Serbian special forces unit also known as the Red Berets, of raping a Bosnian women in Brcko on June 20, 1992, and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

Railway personnel and passengers from the train that was stopped in the small Bosnian town of Strpci on February 27, 1993, when paramilitaries seized 20 passengers who were later killed, told Belgrade Higher Court on Monday recollect how no one tried to stop the abductions of 20 non-Serbs from the train.