[JURIST] The office of the Bosnian war crimes prosecutor [official website] on Thursday indicted eight Bosnian Serbs [press release] on charges of taking part in war crimes early in the Bosnian war. Damir Ivankovic, Zoran Babic, Gordan Djuric, Milorad Radakovic, Milorad Skrbic, Ljubisa Cetic, Dusan Jankovic and Zeljko Stojnic are suspected to have taken part in the August 21, 1992 massacre of over 200 Muslims and Croat civilians as part of an ethnic cleansing on Mount Vlasic. The prisoners, who were told they were being released, were taken to the woods, and forced to kneel at the edge of a ravine where they were then shot. Four of the suspects were arrested [JURIST report] in October.

In 2004, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website] sentenced [press release] former Bosnian Serb "Intervention Squad" officer Darko Mrdja [ICTY backgrounder, PDF] to 17 years in prison for "unloading, guarding, escorting, shooting and killing" the victims at Koricanske Stijene. The Bosnian Prosecutor's Office works in tandem with the War Crimes Chamber [HRW backgrounder] of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website; JURIST news archive], which was established to alleviate the caseload of the ICTY. The War Crimes Chamber will continue to hear cases as the ICTY winds down in 2010.