Bosnian Serb Army

On Wednesday however, the Serbian Interior Ministry denied that Savcic had entered the country. The Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina also said he had not been registered as leaving.

By disappearing, Savcic became one of dozens of war crime defendants or convicts who are unavailable to the Bosnian judicial authorities. Most of them are in Serbia.

The Bosnian state court on Monday ordered Milomir Savcic, the wartime commander of the 65th Protective Motorised Regiment of the Bosnian Serb Army's Main Headquarters, to be remanded in custody for breaching a court order prohibiting him from speaking publicly about issues related to the charges against him, his lawyer told BIRN.

The Appeals Court in Belgrade told BIRN that it has partially upheld an appeal from former Bosnian Serb Army soldier Dragomir Kezunovic and given him a lower sentence of five years in prison for crimes committed during the Bosnian war.

A report published on Wednesday by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Sufferings of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region between 1992 and 1995, which was set up by the government of Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, seeks to cast doubt on whether thousands of Bosniaks who were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995 were innocent civilians.

Six Bosnian Serb ex-servicemen - Ilija Krcmar, Bosko Uncanin, Svetislav Racic, Zeljko Bajic and two others who both have the name Nikola Cuk - failed to appear at the Bosnian state court on Tuesday for the opening of their trial for crimes against humanity.

Two more defendants, Marinko Miljevic and Dragan Despot, did appear in court, and both pleaded not guilty.

From January to the end of June this year, the Bosnian state prosecution has only charged two people with wartime crimes, BIRN has learned, despite a huge backlog of unprosecuted cases related to the 1992-95 conflict in the country.

The decision by the UN court in The Hague last month to uphold the life sentence handed down to former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic takes the number of life terms imposed for involvement in the Srebrenica genocide to five.

Zoran Vukovic at the UN war crimes court in The Hague in December 1999. Photo: EPA/COR MULDER.

"Montenegro called for Vukovic's extradition in 2016. The Serbian [justice] ministry made no decision on extradition," said Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, head of Human Rights Action.

The Bosnian state court on Monday convicted Bozidar Perisic of shooting two Bosniak men dead in the village of Gracanica, near Rogatica, on June 19, 1992.

The bodies of victims Salem and Mustafa Sijercic were later burned by unknown members of the Bosnian Serb Army, and have still not been found.

The Bosnian state court announced on Monday that it has partially upheld appeals filed by former detention camp guards Boris Bosnjak Miodrag Grubacic and Ilija Djajic, who were convicted of the inhumane treatment of non-Serb civilians at the former Mosa Pijade military barracks in Bileca in 1992, reducing their sentences.