In Bosnia and Herzegovina

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 Serbian authorities granted citizenship to former Bosnian Serb military policeman Mirko Vrucinic in June 2020 - two months before his defence was due to present its closing arguments in his war crimes trial, BIRN has learned.

The commission was founded as an attempt to "offer a more balanced depiction of the events in Sarajevo based on facts", the report says. It was chaired by Israeli historian and writer Raphael Israeli, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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".

Human Rights House Zagreb said in its annual report published on Thursday that there has been "no significant progress in the prosecution of war crimes in 2020" in Croatia.

The report published on Tuesday by the controversial Commission for Investigating the Sufferings of Serbs in Sarajevo, which was set up by Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska to highlight its perspective on wartime events, claimed that Serbs were forced out of the Bosnian capital by Bosniak forces during the 1992-95 war.

Ignoring criticism of the event, a Bosnian Serb minister attended a memorial service on Monday in Visegrad for Russian fighters in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, where flowers were laid at the Monument to the Fallen Russian Volunteers at the Megdan Military Cemetery.

Closing arguments in the case against former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, who are accused of controlling Serb fighters who committed crimes during the Croatian and Bosnian wars, are being heard from Monday to Wednesday at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague.

Retired general Jovan Divjak has died after a prolonged illness at the age of 84, Education Builds Bosnia, the NGO he established, announced in a statement.Born on March 11, 1937, in Belgrade, he graduated from the Military Academy, the Command and Staff Academy and the War School. He later graduated also from the French Army Staff School.

The Cantonal Court in Sarajevo has convicted Veljko Papic, the wartime commander of the Third Company of the Bosnian Serb Army's Sarajevo-Romanija Corps' First Battalion, of giving orders forcing non-Serb civilians to do hard labour and putting them in life-threatening situations on the front lines in besieged Sarajevo during wartime.