Bosnian Genocide

The court decision comes after Petkovic, who is now in Serbia, was due to enter his plea on June 16, but failed to appear in court. The State Court said that he had also failed to attend an earlier hearing on March 10 this year.

MPs in the Albanian parliament voted unanimously on Thursday to support a resolution honouring the victims of the Srebrenica genocide, ahead of the anniversary next week of the July 1995 massacres of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces.

The resolution also declares July 11, when annual commemorations are held in Bosnia, as a day of remembrance in Albania.

It commemorates the issuing of a decree in May 1992 by the wartime Bosnian Serb authorities in Prijedor, which was announced on Radio Prijedor, telling all non-Serbs to mark their houses with white flags or bedsheets and to wear white armbands when going outside - an incident that has become symbolic of the deadly campaign of persecution in the area at the time.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Friday confirmed a first-instance verdict sentencing Senad Dzananovic to 11 years in prison and Edin Gadzo to five years for crimes against Serb civilians in the Alipasino Polje neighbourhood of Sarajevo.

The court said that the defendants' appeals had been rejected as "unfounded".

The 'Mother's Scarf' art installation, part of the Srebrenica Heroines initiative, will open next month at the Srebrenica Memorial Centre as part of commemorations to mark the 27th anniversary of the 1995 genocide of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces.

War victims' associations, rights activists and Western diplomats in Bosnia and Herzegovina have criticised a police ban on a march marking the annual White Ribbon Day in Prijedor, which is intended to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the start of wartime persecution by Bosnian Serb forces in the area.

Hundreds of people joined a gathering in Prijedor on Tuesday to mark White Ribbon Day and commemorate the 102 children and more than 3,000 other civilians who were killed in the area during the war.

People tied white ribbons to fences and laid red roses in the square in tribute, as well as holding up banners with photographs of the victims.

Ex-soldiers Zoran and Radenko Ilic went on trial on Monday at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo for persecuting Bosniak civilians in the municipality of Rogatica on ethnic and religious grounds.

Begajeta Mujic, a Bosniak civilian, told Belgrade Higher Court on Monday that female prisoners held at the Sase mine prison camp in the Srebrenica municipality by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992 were taken out and raped.

Former Bosnian Serb soldier Novak Stjepanovic is on trial for raping a young Bosnian female at a house in Bratunac in early June 1992.

"I am not guilty," Novica Tripkovic told the Bosnian state court on Thursday, denying that he forced two female Bosniak captives to have sex with him between August 2 and 9, 1992 in the Foca municipality.