Bosnian War

The police department in Trebinje announced on Tuesday that it has sent a criminal complaint to the state prosecution accusing wartime commanders Zulfikar Alispago and Nezim Halilovic of crimes against Serb and Croat civilians in the Konjic area in 1992 and 1993.

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.

For her book, entitled 'Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War', she interviewed 131 members of these communities from parts of Croatia that were directly or indirectly influenced by the conflict.

A Bosnian court on Oct. 30 sentenced a former Serb soldier to 20 years in prison for committing war crimes against Bosniak civilians during the 1992 Bosnian War.

The prosecution in the trial of former Bosnian Serb Army soldiers Joja Plavanjac and Zdravko Narancic urged Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday to convict both defendants of committing crimes against Bosniak civilian prisoners during the Bosnian war.

Domestic courts have still not convicted anyone of this or many other shelling incidents in Tuzla during wartime, in which over 100 civilians were killed. Despite the fact that the Bosniak-majority city was declared a protected zone by the United Nations in June 1993, it was subsequently targeted by Bosnian Serb forces.

The Bosnian prosecution said on Monday that the incomplete remains of a war victim have been exhumed by investigators in Trnovo in the Sekovici municipality.

"The exhumation of the terrain at the Trnovo site, in the municipality of Sekovici, has been completed and the incomplete remains of one person have been found," the prosecution said in a statement.

The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina heard at its session on Wednesday that 30 per cent of war crimes suspects cannot be reached by prosecutors as they are living outside the country or have absconded.

It was recommended at the HJPC session that a top-level regional conference be organised to address the issue.

Republika Srpska's interior ministry officially unveiled its new gendarmerie police unit on Tuesday at a ceremony in Zaluzani, near the entity's administrative centre Banja Luka - a move that sparked criticism from Bosniak politicians in the Serb-dominated entity.

The Missing Persons Institute of Bosnia and Herzegovina told BIRN on Monday that investigators carrying out an exhumation of a suspected war grave have found two skulls that are believed to belong to Bosniaks from the village of Rizvanovici in the Prijedor area.