Bosnian state court

According to the plan, work on hundreds of unsolved cases should be completed by 2023.

However, the deadline set in the previous national strategy, which envisaged that the most complex war crimes cases would be solved by 2015, was not met, and some legal experts doubt that the new strategy will succeed either.

Bosniak Party MP Ervin Ibrahimovic during a parliament session in Podgorica. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro.

"We have to face the past and pay homage to the victims. That is the task of Montenegro, which should continue the course that makes it a factor of stability in the region," Ibrahimovic told media.

Presenting its appeal at the Bosnian state court on Monday, the prosecution called for a harsher punishment for Sasa Curcic, who was convicted under a first-instance verdict of committing a crime against humanity for raping a woman in July 1992 and sentenced to five years in prison.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Thursday upheld an appeal from Enver Buza, former commander of the Independent Battalion Prozor of the Bosnian Army, and quashed the first-instance verdict that sentenced him to 12 years in prison for wartime crimes in Uzdol, near the town of Prozor, in 1993.

The court said that Buza should be retried.

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday dismissed a request from Milan Lukic, wartime commander of the White Eagles paramilitary unit, for a review of his conviction leading to a possible sentence reduction.

Sretko Pavic, who was convicted in July this year of war crimes against civilians, did not report to prison to serve his 11-year sentence, the Bosnian state court has confirmed.

Pavic was obliged to start serving his prison term by November 30, but filed a motion requesting a postponement.

On that same day in Traktorska Street in Sijekovac, a village near the northern Bosnian town of Bosanski Brod, where Milosevic still lives, soldiers and members of paramilitary groups, some of which consisted of locals Croats and Bosniaks, killed his father Luka and two brothers, Zeljko and Dragan, who was 17. Zeljko's body has never been found.

In closing arguments at the Bosnian state court on Thursday, the prosecution asked for Mile Pazin and Vide Kresic to be found guilty of crimes against civilian prisoners in the Stolac area in 1993.

"The prosecution considers that it has proved beyond doubt that the defendants committed the crimes that they are charged with in this case," said Bosnian state prosecutor Igor Dubak.

Former Territorial Defence fighter Milan Trisic went on trial at the Bosnian state court on Wednesday, accused of committing crimes against humanity in the village of Hranca and in the town of Bratunac in 1992.

He is accused of participating in the persecution of Bosniak civilians from the village and of involvement in murders, detentions, forcible disappearances and torture.

The Bosnian state court on Tuesday convicted three Bosnian Serb Army ex-soldiers, Branko Cigoja, Zeljko Todic and Sasa Boskic, of committing crimes against civilians in the village of Oborci Donji Vakuf municipality on September 13, 1995.