Bosnian Genocide

Mayor of Niksic Marko Kovacevic (right) at a session of parliament. Photo: Parliament of Montenegro.

"After gathering the necessary evidence, the Higher Prosecution in Podgorica filed an indictment, and the High Court in Podgorica will have to confirm it," state prosecutor Lepa Medenica told news website CDM.

Lawyers for former Serbian State Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic appealed on Monday against the verdict in June which sentenced them both to 12 years in prison for aiding and abetting crimes war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

Boro Milojica's defence lawyer Ranko Dakic told BIRN that an appeal to reduce the former Bosnian Serb Army soldier's 20-year sentence has been rejected by the appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court.

When the trial of a group of Serb fighters accused of the abductions and killings of passengers who were seized from a train in Bosnia during the war in 1993 continues at Belgrade Higher Court next month, there will be one fewer defendant in the dock.

This is the conclusion of the Independent International Commission for the Study of the Suffering of All Nations in the Srebrenica Region in the period 1992-1995, formed by the Government of Republika Srpska.

Relatives of the Bosniaks and Croats killed at the Koricani Cliffs by Bosnian Serb forces will mark the 29th anniversary of the massacre on Saturday by throwing roses into the deep mountain pit where their loved ones' bodies were dumped after they were killed in 1992.

The Higher Court in Belgrade told BIRN on Wednesday that it has terminated proceedings against Nenad Bubalo, the former deputy commander of the military police of the Bosnian Serb Army's 15th Bihac Brigade, because he has died.

The Bosnian state prosecution filed an indictment charging Bubalo in September 2017. It was announced at the time that he was a Serbian citizen.

The Bosnian state prosecution said on Monday that Ranko Cesic, Slobodan Ljubicic and Stojan Petrovic have been charged with committing a crime against humanity in the Brcko area between April and December 1992.

Cesic and Ljubicic are accused of killing four civilian Bosniaks, and of unlawfully and violently detaining female civilians, after which they raped and sexually abused them.

June 2021 was an unusually busy month for coverage of war crimes in the Serbian media, which doesn't usually report on the subject very often. Just a few weeks apart, two major verdicts were announced in The Hague that were highly uncomfortable for Serbia.

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.