Sarajevo – (AFP)
Five Bosnian Serbs were sentenced on Friday to prison terms ranging from 5 to 20 years, convicted of killing dozens of Bosnian civilians, including children and women, at the beginning of the sectarian war in Bosnia in the 1990s.
The Bosnian State Court sentenced Ilija Zoric to 20 years in prison, after convicting him of participating in a massacre in which 29 women and children took refuge in a house in the town of Zikovi in the Prijedor region (northwest).
This is the maximum penalty for war crimes under domestic law.
An Agence France-Presse journalist reported that out of eleven former soldiers and policemen on trial since 2015 in this case, six were acquitted, but none of them were present when the verdict was read in the court of first instance.
The massacre was committed in Zhikovi on July 25, 1992, on the third day of the “cleansing” of the town, in which at least 150 residents were killed by Bosnian Serb army and police forces, according to the Public Prosecution.
Judge Saban Maksomic said that the remains of the 32 civilians killed had not been found.
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2023-12-22 20:14:29
