Former top politician among four charged over Bosnian War crimes

Belgrade (dpa) - Bosnian prosecutors said Thursday that they charged four Serbs, including a former top politician, for attrocities carried out against Muslim Bosniaks and Croats in the 1992-95 Bosnian War.Borislav Paravac, 72, who served as the Serb member in Bosnia‘s tripartite presidency from 2003 to 2006, and his co-defendants are accused of committing a "broad and systematic attack on Bosniak and Croat civilian population."Paravac, Milan Ninkovic, Andrija Bjelosevic and Milan Savic were high-ranking officials in the local Serb administration in Doboj, in northern Bosnia, when the attrocities took place 23 years ago.They were suspected of carrying out war crimes as part of the command chain in military, police and paramilitary formations.The attack drove nearly the entire non-Serb population, around 10,000 people, from the area through systematic murder, illegal imprisonment in camps, torture, maltreatment, and robbing, as well as the destruction of property, churches and mosques.The prosecutor said that several hundred people were murdered, individually and in groups, then buried in mass graves. Many are still missing. Thousands were interred and tortured in camps, according to the charges.The case is one of many initiated by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), then handed to Bosnian authorities.Bosnia split from former Yugoslavia in 1992, then descended into the worst of the Yugoslav wars which claimed around 100,000 lives and displaced millions.The war, pitting Serbs against the Muslim Bosniaks and ethnic Croats, ended with a US-brokered division of territory along ethnic lines which still persists and severely hampers Bosnia‘s development.The ICTY is presently trying two top Bosnian Serb leaders, former president Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic, under charges that include genocide. Verdicts are expected in March and November, respectively.