BOSNIAN STATE COURT CONVICTS FOUR SERBIAN WAR CRIMINALS

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (April 23,2008) – The Bosnian State Court has convicted yesterday four Serbian war criminals of murdering Bosnian civilians during the 1992-95 Serbian aggression against Bosnia and issued varying sentences.

A court statement said two Serbian war criminals with the same name, Mirko Pekez, and Serbian war criminal Milorad Savic, forced 27 Bosnian civilians to line up at the edge of a cliff in central Bosnia and shot them with automatic rifles. Four Bosnian civilians survived with bad injuries.

These Serbian war criminals were members of the genocidal Serbian aggressor's formations when they forced the Bosnian civilians, ranging in age from 9 to 74, out of their homes in villages near the Bosnian town of Jajce and took them to the cliff for execution.

The Bosnian State Court said none of the 13 men, 10 women, one child and three teenagers were in any way involved in the armed conflict.

Serbian war criminal Mirko Pekez, 42, was sentenced to 29 years in prison while Serbian war criminal Mirko Pekez, 41, and Serbian war criminal Milorad Savic, 37, were given 21-year sentences.

In another trial, Serbian war criminal Dusan Fustar, 44, was sentenced to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to taking part in the torture and execution of Bosnian civilians in a concentration camp,during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia.

In 1992, Serbian war criminal Dusan Fustar served as the head of one of the three guard shifts in the Keraterm concentration camp, near the northern Bosnian town of Prijedor, the court statement said. During his shifts, he did not prevent regular torture of detained Bosnian civilians by his guards or other genocidal Serbian aggressor's soldiers, it said. A number of detained Bosnian civilians were beaten do death.

The Bosnian State Court has a special department for war crimes, which is partly staffed by international prosecutors and judges. The department is supposed to take over cases from the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, which is scheduled to close in 2010.
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