Bosnian Genocide

Former employees from the Ripac police station near Bihac testified at the trial of Bosnian Serb Army ex-soldier Dragan Dopudja at Belgrade Higher Court on Wednesday that around 150 Bosnian civilians were detained at an old tractor repair shop in the village of Ripac in June 1992.

Ratko Djurkovic told the Bosnian state court on Tuesday that he was innocent of persecuting Bosniak civilians on ethnic and religious grounds in the Ugljevik area from April 1992 to the end of October that year.

"I plead not guilty," Djurkovic said.

The Constitutional Court in Sarajevo has ruled that former policeman Mico Jurisic's right to a fair trial was not breached, upholding his conviction for crimes against humanity.

Radovan Karadzic's lawyer Peter Robinson told BIRN on Friday that the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague has not agreed to the wartime Bosnian Serb political leader's demand to serve his sentence in a country other than Britain, where he feels his life could be in danger.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, sentenced to life for war crimes and genocide, will serve his sentence in a UK prison, the British government announced on Wednesday. Karadzic, 75, is one of the chief architects of the slaughter and devastation of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, AP recalls.

The British government announced that Karadzic will be transferred to Britain to serve the rest of his sentence.

The British Foreign Office said on Wednesday that it has agreed to allow wartime Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, who was jailed for life by the UN court in The Hague, to be transferred to a prison in the UK.

The prosecutor at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Douglas Stringer, urged the UN court on Monday to impose life sentences on former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko 'Frenki' Simatovic for crimes committed during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

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.

The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has turned down an appeal from Darko Mrdja, a former member of a police intervention squad at the Public Security Station in the city of Prijedor, against the verdict convicting him of crimes against humanity.