Croatian Defence Council

The Cantonal Court in Zenica delivered a first-instance verdict on Friday acquitting Ivica Jukic, alias Juka, of mistreating Bosniak prisoners of war at the Silos Nova Trgovina detention facility in Zepce in August 1993.

Presiding judge Enes Malicbegovic said that some of the testimonies from witnesses who had allegedly been mistreated were either contradictory or too similar.

A defence witness told the war crime trial of wartime fighter Osman Osmanovic at Belgrade Higher Court on Monday that he was held at the jail where the defendant allegedly assaulted prisoners in the Brcko area of Bosnia and Herzegovina but did not see any prisoners being beaten or tortured while he was there.

Media reported on Monday that Pero Vincetic, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, died in Croatia shortly after Croatian police charged him with war crimes.

This year's commemoration of the April 30 1992 Brcko bridge massacre was organised by the Association of Families of the Missing, Forcibly Taken away and Killed Bosniaks of Brcko District of BiH and the Association of Families of the Missing, Forcibly Taken away and Killed Croats in collaboration with associations for helping victims and survivors of sexual violence and detainees.

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic on Tuesday defended his decision to receive in his office former Croatian Defence Council, HVO officers, including Tihomir Blaskic, who served a prison sentence for his role in crimes committed during the Bosnian war after being convicted by the UN court in The Hague.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court announced  on Thursday that it has upheld the first-instance verdict sentencing Mile Pazin to one-and-a-half years in prison for the inhumane treatment of a Bosniak civilian in the Stolac area during wartime in July 1993.

The court said it was "dismissing defendant Mile Pazin's appeal as unfounded".

Mile Pazin's defence launched an appeal on Wednesday at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo against last September's verdict finding him guilty of the inhumane treatment of a Bosniak civilian prisoner during the war.

Activists from the Centre for Non-Violent Action said they installed temporary commemorative plaques this month in the Zenica, Doboj and Zepce areas of Bosnia as part of an ongoing campaign to push local authorities to create permanent memorials to war victims.

On January 28, 1994, reporter Marco Luchetta, cameraman Alessandro 'Sasa' Ota and technician Dario D'Angelo, who all worked for the Italian public broadcaster RAI-TV, were on assignment in the town of Mostar filming a story about children who were growing up amid the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The detainees were tied together with wire and made to stand in a line, and then their captors started to execute them with shots in the back.