JURIST - Paper Chase: Bosnia authorities arrest Srebrenica war crimes suspect

[JURIST] A suspected Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) war criminal was arrested [press release] Monday in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre during the end of 1992-95 Bosnian civil war [JURIST news archives]. The Prosecutors Office for BiH [official website] announced that Dragan Crnogorac was arrested in the city of Banja Luka on suspicion for having committed genocide under Article 171 of the BiH criminal code [text, PDF]. Crnogorac was a police officer who is alleged to have shot Bosnian Muslim men and boys [CP report] after the town of Srebrenica fell in July 1995. More than 8,000 men were killed in what is the worst massacre since the Nazi era. The war crimes division of the Prosecutors Office will conduct the questioning and then decide whether to further pursue the case.

In August, Spanish officials extradited accused Montenegrin war criminal [JURIST report] Veselin Vlahovic, known as the "monster of Grbavica," to Sarajevo. He is wanted on three international arrest warrants, including one for the rape, torture and murder of more than 100 women and children and is expected to face genocide charges before the country's war war crimes court [official website], established in 2005 to assist the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) [official website]. Also in August, the court issued genocide charges against four former Bosnian Serb soldiers in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica massacre alleging that they were all members of the 10th Sabotage Detachment in the army of Republika Srpska. They are accused of participating in the murder of more than 800 Bosnian Muslims during the massacre. In April, the court convicted two men of genocide, Radomir Vukovic and Zoran Tomic, for their roles in the Srebrenica massacre and sentenced each to 31 years imprisonment.