[JURIST] Spokesperson for Serbia's Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor [official website] Bruno Vekaric Saturday announced the arrest of nine individuals suspected of committing war crimes during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive]. The nine, members of the Serbian paramilitary group [B92 report] Sakali, are accused of the systematic murders [AP report] of 41 ethnic Albanians in May 1999. In all, roughly 200 civilians residing in and around the village of Cuska are believed to have been killed by these and 15 other suspects. Those in custody are scheduled to appear before an investigative judge.

In June, Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] marked the 10-year anniversary of the conflict's end by reporting that many human rights abuses that occurred during the war in Kosovo have gone uninvestigated and unpunished [JURIST report]. Prosecutors have nonetheless secured several convictions. A week after AI's report, a Serbian court convicted [JURIST report] four former paramilitary officers of killing 14 Albanians in northern Kosovo. In April, four Serbian ex-policemen were convicted [JURIST report] of killing of 48 Albanian civilians in Suva Reka. In October 2008, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina [official website, in Bosnian] sentenced ex-policeman Vaso Todorovic to six years in prison [JURIST report] for the capture and detention of 40,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. Earlier that month, four Bosnian Serbs were arrested for the killing of 200 civilians [JURIST report] in Koricanske Stijene.

[JURIST] Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt [official website] and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu [official profile] Saturday jointly denounced the Swedish Parliament's Thursday passage of a resolution [text, in Swedish] recognizing the Ottoman Empire's killing of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as genocide [JURIST news archive]. At a meeting of European foreign ministers in northern Finland Davutoglu questioned the rationale [Reuters report] of the move, one that Bildt characterized as the "politicization of history." Davutoglu insisted that his country would not succumb to political pressure. Both ministers noted concerns that the resolution would undermine the progress that Armenia and Turkey have made toward stabilizing their relations.

The Swedish Parliament adopted the resolution [JURIST report] by a vote of 131-130, prompting Turkey to recall its ambassador [press release] from Stockholm and cancel official events in Sweden. The Swedish resolution came only a week after the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs [official website] voted 23-22 to adopt [JURIST report] a resolution [H Res 252 text] labeling the killings as genocide. The US government has indicated that it will seek to block the resolution [JURIST report] from being put before the full House of Representatives. A similar resolution was passed by the committee in 2007, but it never reached the House floor [JURIST reports].

[JURIST] The Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) war crimes court [official website] indicted [Reuters report] the former Serb commander of a special police brigade Saturday for his alleged role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian civil war [JURIST news archives]. The BiH prosecutor [official website] accuses Nedjo Ikonic of participating in the killing of thousands of Muslim men and boys including more than one thousand who escaped Srebinaca but were detained in a warehouse in the nearby village of Kravice. Ikonic was extradited [JURIST report] to BiH in January after he was arrested on an international arrest warrant. Three other former Bosnian Serb policemen have been indicted [JURIST report] on charges of genocide for their alleged roles massacre.

The BiH war crimes court was set up in 2005 to relieve the caseload of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website], and is authorized to try lower-level war crime suspects. The court delivered its first sentences [JURIST report] against war crimes suspects from Yugoslavia's violent ethnic conflicts of the 1990s in July 2008, convicting seven of genocide for their involvement in killings committed at the Srebrenica [JURIST news archive] prison camp. The ICTY retains jurisdiction over high-level war crimes allegations, such as those against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic [ICTY materials; JURIST news archive] and General Ratko Mladic [ICTY materials].

[JURIST] The California Orange County District Attorney (OCDA) [official website] filed a consumer protection suit [complaint, PDF] against car manufacturer Toyota [corporate website] on Friday, alleging that the company knowingly sold vehicles with acceleration defects. The suit seeks up to $2,500 in penalties for each violation of California's Unfair Business Practices Act [text]. The OCDA outlined [press release] the case against Toyota, saying it

...intends to prove the following in the litigation: Despite knowledge of the defects, Toyota continues to sell and lease its cars and trucks while knowingly concealing and suppressing information about the defects from consumers. Since 2001, Toyota is accused of falsely representing to the public that Toyota-manufactured vehicles are safe and reliable. Toyota continues to conceal from consumers that their vehicles cause sudden, uncontrollable acceleration when drivers are not touching the accelerator and attempt to use their brakes.