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Serbia police arrest 9 suspected of Kosovo war crimes

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] Spokesperson for Serbia's Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor Bruno Vekaric Saturday announced the arrest of nine individuals suspected of committing war crimes during the 1998-1999 Kosovo war. The nine, members of the Serbian paramilitary group Sakali, are accused of the systematic murders of 41 ethnic Albanians in May 1999. In all, roughly 200 civilians residing in and around the village of Cuska are believed to have been killed by these and 15 other suspects. Those in custody are scheduled to appear before an investigative judge. In June, Amnesty International (AI) marked the 10-year anniversary of the conflict's end by reporting that many human rights abuses that occurred during the war in Kosovo have gone uninvestigated and unpunished. Prosecutors have nonetheless secured several convictions. A week after AI's report, a Serbian court convicted four former paramilitary officers of killing 14 Albanians in northern Kosovo. In April, four Serbian ex-policemen were convicted of killing of 48 Albanian civilians in Suva Reka. In October 2008, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced ex-policeman Vaso Todorovic to six years in prison for the capture and detention of 40,000 Bosnian Muslims in 1995. Earlier that month, four Bosnian Serbs were arrested for the killing of 200 civilians in Koricanske Stijene.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on March 13, 2010 (boomark / email).