Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Belgrade Higher Court on Friday sentenced Joja Plavanjac to 15 years in prison and Zdravko Narancic to seven years for their roles in the killings of 11 civilian detainees at a prison in Bosanska Krupa in Bosnia on August 3, 1992.

Plavanjac was convicted of killing the prisoners and Narancic of helping him.

Scores of people joined a rally in Tuzla on Wednesday to protest about the recent publication in Serbia of the book 'Tuzla Gate - A Stage-Managed Tragedy', which claims that Bosnian Serb forces did not shell the town and kill 71 people on May 25, 1995.

The Humanitarian Law Centre NGO said in a report published on Wednesday that in the summer of 1995, the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs forcibly mobilised around 10,000 refugees and took them back to territories under the control of the Bosnian Serb Army in Bosnia and the rebel Serb-run Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia.

Radovan Paprica and Slavko Ognjenovic pleaded not guilty at the Bosnian state court on Wednesday to crimes including rape and sexual abuse in the Foca area between early April 1992 and late March 1993.

"I plead not guilty to all charges. I shall prove that with substantiated evidence," Paprica said when asked by the court to enter his plea.

Lawmakers in Bosnia's mainly Serb entity of Republika Srpska adopted principles on Tuesday declaring the entity's right to referenda on 'self-determination' and Bosnian membership of NATO.

Belgrade Higher Court has been waiting since April for the results of tests to determine whether Novak Djukic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army's Ozren Tactical Group, can appear in court, again delaying the long-running proceedings in the case, BIRN has learned.

Austrian writer Peter Handke, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for literature, confirmed on Thursday evening that he was given a Yugoslav passport in 1999 when the country was under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic.

The paramount leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Milorad Dodik, says he is ready to move the case of a murdered 21-year-old student - who was killed in March last year and whose death has not been resolved - from the district attorney's office to the state prosecutor's office in Bosnia.

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.

The Serbian Defence Ministry hosted a promotional event on Tuesday evening for a new book that claims to prove that Bosnian Serb forces were not responsible for the Tuzla Gate massacre in which 71 people died on May 25, 1995, contradicting the facts established by the Bosnian state court.