DAWN.COM

Today's Paper | September 18, 2024

Published 04 Jun, 2008 12:00am

Serb policeman held over Srebrenica massacre

SARAJEVO, June 3: Bosnian police have arrested a Bosnian Serb policeman suspected of taking part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of about 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, the office of the war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday.

Zoran Tomic was a member of the special police unit in the town of Sekovici during the 1992-95 war.

He was suspended from his job by international peace envoy Miroslav Lajcak last year along with 34 other Bosnian Serb policemen suspected of involvement in the Srebrenica killings.

“As a member of the special police Zoran Tomic is suspected along with other members of his unit of actively taking part in ... committing genocide in the Srebrenica area from July 10-July 19, 1995,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.During the war, the eastern enclave had been protected by UN forces but was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces commanded by General Ratko Mladic on July 11, 1995.

The Bosnian Serbs separated Muslim men from women and children in Srebrenica and in only one week executed them en masse at several sites in eastern Bosnia. They hunted down and killed men who tried to escape through woods.

Tomic is suspected of taking part in the search of Muslim homes in Srebrenica, detention of Muslims and their forced re-allocation to areas under the control of the Bosnian Muslim-dominated army, the statement said.

He is also suspected of taking part in the capture and detention of over 1,000 Muslim men at the farming cooperative in the village of Kravice, and the killing of Muslim men in the Kravice warehouse, the statement added.

—Reuters

Read Comments

Israel hit by hypersonic ballistic missile Next Story