Novak Djukic

Relatives of the victims, local residents and politicians were among hundreds of people who gathered on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the massacre in the Kapija area of Tuzla, known as the 'crime against Tuzla's youth' - one of the deadliest attacks on civilians during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

When former police official Edin Vranj was arrested last weekend while entering Serbia on suspicion that he committed war crimes against prisoners of war during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina responded furiously.

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.

Twenty-six years ago, a shell fired from positions held by the Bosnian Serb Army hit the Kapija area of Tuzla in central Bosnia and Herzegovina, killing 71 people and injuring over 200 more.

Most of the casualties on May 25, 1995 were young people; the youngest was a two-and-a-half-year-old boy called Sandro Kalesic.

The 25th anniversary of the shelling of the Kapija area of Tuzla by the Bosnian Serb Army was marked on Monday with the laying of flowers at the cemetery where most of the 71 mainly young people killed in May 1995 are buried, which was due to be followed by the symbolic sounding of an air-raid siren in the evening.

Serge Brammertz, the chief prosecutor at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, told a meeting of prosecutors from former Yugoslav countries about cooperation in war crime cases in Sarajevo on Wednesday that "too little has been done on regional cooperation in the past three years".

Scores of people joined a rally in Tuzla on Wednesday to protest about the recent publication in Serbia of the book 'Tuzla Gate - A Stage-Managed Tragedy', which claims that Bosnian Serb forces did not shell the town and kill 71 people on May 25, 1995.

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.

The Defence Ministry reacted angrily on Wednesday evening after the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Dunja Mijatovic, criticised it for hosting a promotional event in Belgrade for a book that denies court findings that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for the May 1995 massacre in Tuzla.

The Serbian Defence Ministry hosted a promotional event on Tuesday evening for a new book that claims to prove that Bosnian Serb forces were not responsible for the Tuzla Gate massacre in which 71 people died on May 25, 1995, contradicting the facts established by the Bosnian state court.