Posted on 11/04/2003 9:55:12 AM PST by joan
SARAJEVO, Nov 4 (AFP) - A Sarajevo court sentenced a former Bosnian Muslim soldier to 10 years in jail Tuesday for his role in a wartime massacre of Croat civilians, a prosecutor said.
Enes Sakrak, 30, was accused of taking part in the September 1993 massacre of more than 30 Bosnian Croat civilians, mainly elderly people, in Grabovica village by the Bosnian government army.
He was "sentenced to 10 years in prison... for committing war crimes against civilians" during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, Sarajevo county chief prosecutor Mustafa Bisic said in a statement.
He is the first person to be sentenced for the massacre.
Sakrak was arrested in August along with co-accused Mustafa Hota. He pleaded guilty to the murder of two civilians during the massacre, the statement said.
Sakrak's case is part of a wider investigation into the massacre in Grabovica, 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Sarajevo, the statement added, without disclosing the number of soldiers under investigation.
The Grabovica atrocity occurred during the year-long Croat-Muslim conflict which broke out on the sidelines of Bosnia's 1992-95 war, when Bosnian Croats and Muslims fought against Bosnian Serbs who opposed independence from the former communist Yugoslavia.
In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague indicted Bosnia's wartime army chief-of-staff, retired general Sefer Halilovic, for violation of the customs of war during the operation that included the Grabovica massacre.
Halilovic, who turned himself in to the UN tribunal in September 2001, was provisionally released pending trial. He was accused of failing to investigate and punish the perpetrators of the massacre.
Sakrak is mentioned in Halilovic's indictment as the murderer of a Croat woman and her four-year-old daughter, while Hota is said to have shot dead a 79-year-old man.
The Sarajevo trial was approved by the ICTY under an agreement whereby Bosnian courts can conduct war crimes trials only after receiving the go-ahead from the UN court.
More than 200,000 people lost their lives during Bosnia's war, while more than two million, over half the country's population, were forced to flee their homes.
http://www.hercegbosna.org/engleski/cromusl.htmlThe attacks and level of violence towards the Croat population living in the area of the Neretva valley, north of Mostar has culminated on September 9th, 1993, the day when the Muslim forces led by so called "Zuka's special forces" have committed the massacre in the village of Grabovica (Mostar municipality). The vicinity of the village was already under the control of B&H Army since May 10th, 1993. After they had entered the village, "Zuka's special forces" started to shoot on "everything that moved", although they knew all too well that the village was "open area" without any defense, and that it was currently inhabited by elderly, females and children. 32 Croat civilians were massacred, while others were taken to the concentration camp "Museum" in Jablanica. All that was worth stealing was taken from the Croat houses and then the village was burned to the ground. Soon after they realized that terrible news about the crime was coming out, Muslim political and military structures in the area did everything to cover up the crime. As a result, until now there are still corpses of the victims that were not found nor identified. Just a small numbers of corpses were received in the grisly exchange with the Muslims. Also, for the time being, the Croats are not allowed to enter the village of Grabovica and continue with the search in order to have the closure of the tragedy for the families. There are rumors that the victim's bodies have been thrown in the nearby lake in order to make the investigation stall.
And he will probably be the only one, an attempt to show that the court is fair, and charges criminals on both sides............. yeah sure.
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