Persecution of Muslims

BELGRADE - In occupied Europe during WWII, only the Ustasha Independent State of Croatia had specialised death camps for Serb, Jewish and Romani children, notes a resolution on Ustasha killings of Serb, Jewish and Romani children in death camps for children in the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945.

BELGRADE - The Serbian government on Thursday adopted conclusions under which Serbia and Republika Srpska will build two memorial centres to commemorate the victims of the Jasenovac death camp in the WWII-era Independent State of Croatia.

Tens of thousands of names are written on the walls of the former Jasenovac camp complex. They are the names of the victims, whose old clothes are on display what is now a memorial site, reinforcing a sense of horror at the conditions in which they were forced to live and die.

Seventy-eight years ago, on April 22, 1945, brothers Mate and Stjepan Zukolo were among around 600 prisoners who took part in a major breakout from the main part of the Jasenovac concentration camp and death camp complex.

As the prisoners stormed the gate, attacking the guards with bricks and planks, the Zukolo brothers were immediately separated in the commotion.

The prosecution urged the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday to convict Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic of participating in a joint criminal enterprise, along with other Serb political, military and police officials, aimed at forcibly removing non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during wartime.

"The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia rendered a decision, a final decision, that genocide happened here," she said.

The Bosnian state court said on Thursday that a prosecution appeal against the verdict acquitting former fighters Edhem Godinjak, Medaris Saric and Mirko Bunoza, who had been accused of war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, has been rejected as "unfounded".

Ten days after her term in office began, one of the first tasks undertaken by Graciela Gatti Santana, the new president of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, was to deliver a speech at the commemoration of the 27th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

Women in Black said that an unknown man posing as a postal worker entered the building where the peace group's office is located in Belgrade on Tuesday and poured red paint on the entrance door and on the staircase.

The trial in the case against seven former Bosnian Serb special policemen accused of involvement in the killing of some 1,300 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in an agricultural warehouse in the Bosnian village of Kravica in July 1995 was postponed again at Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday.