SLOVENIAN "FRANC KOS" LINKED TO SREBRENICA GENOCIDE KILLINGS

A Slovenian living in Bosnia under a false identity is suspected of having taken part in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, local media reported.

The Prosecutor's Office in Sarajevo demanded an investigation into 10 people suspected of participating in the massacre in which between 8,000 and 10,000 Bosniak boys and men were executed in July 1995.

The Slovenian is named as Franc Kos and is said to have been mentioned in the minutes taken during testimonies by a number of witnesses before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY.

In the minutes Kos is described as the leader of the Bijeljina platoon, and was known under the nicknames Slovenac or Zuca. The witnesses blamed the platoon for the murder of hundreds, even thousands of Srebrenica Muslims.

Police and prosecutors in the Slovenian town of Celje have confirmed that they investigated Kos’s involvement in the massacre. He is currently living in Republika Srpska, the Serb entity within the Bosnian Federation, under a false identity which has not been revealed.

The news that a Slovenian national was among those suspected of genocide was confirmed to POP TV by the police in Celje, as well as the local prosecution, which is already looking into the allegations that Kos committed crimes in Srebrenica together with Bosnian and Serbian nationals. It was also confirmed that Kos had changed his identity and was living under a different name in the Republic of Srpska.

Slovenian media added that he was not currently in Slovenia, meaning that there was little chance of any charges of genocide being filed against him in Slovenia, where the crime of genocide carries a prison sentence of between 10 and 30 years.

Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic are top indictees for the Serbrenica genocide. Karadzic is behind bars in The Hague, while Mladic is still at large, believed to be hiding in Belgrade, Serbia.

SEVEN GUILTY IN SREBRENICA GENOCIDE TRIAL

A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina has convicted seven Bosnian Serbs of committing genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.

Another four people were acquitted as the decision in the two-year trial was handed down in Sarajevo on Tuesday.

Three former policemen, Milenko Trifunovic, Brano Dzinic and Aleksandar Radovanovic, were sentenced to 42 years in prison; another three former policemen, Milos Stupar, Slobodan Jakovljevic and Branislav Medan, received 40-year sentences; and one, Petar Mitrovic, was sentenced to 38 years.

Tuesday's ruling was the Bosnian war crimes court's first sentence related to Srebrenica, the worst massacre committed in Europe since the Second World War.

The seven were convicted of killing of more than 1,000 captured men of Muslim origin, known as Bosniaks, after Bosnian Serb forces conquered the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

The judges acquitted Velibor Maksimovic, Dragisa Zivanovic, Milovan Matic and Miladin Stevanovic, concluding the prosecutor failed to prove beyond doubt that they took part in the war crimes.

Widows and mothers of the victims were in the courtroom when the verdict was read.

"Nothing can ease my pain," said Munira Subasic, a woman from Srebrenica who lost her son in the massacre. Her son's body has never been found, although more than 3,200 other victims have been found in nearby mass graves, identified through DNA analysis and reburied.

News of the convictions came as thousands of ultra-nationalist Serbs poured into the Serbian capital of Belgrade for a right-wing demonstration tied to the recent capture of former president Radovan Karadzic.

He stands accused of war crimes in connection with the 1995 Srebrenica affair, which killed an estimated 8,000 men and boys in the space of one week, as well as about 10,000 deaths during the three-year siege of Sarajevo in the mid-1990s.

Karadzic now faces extradition to the Netherlands for an appearance in front of a United Nations tribunal in The Hague.

Source: CBC News