Brammertz's pressure bears fruit: In 20 days, SIPA arrested 31 persons suspected of war crimes

At the order of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Friday morning 14 persons were arrested in the territory of BiH and Serbia, charged with war crimes committed in the territory of BiH 19 years ago, writes the BiH news agency Patria.

This is, in the last twenty or so days, the fourth arrest of suspects for war crimes committed in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the aggression from 1992 to 1995.

The intensification of the investigation of war crimes in BiH followed the visit to BiH of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Serge Brammertz, and the Head of the BiH Unit at the Directorate-General for Enlargement of the European Commission, Mihaela Matuela, who stayed in Sarajevo from 12 to 14 November.

During the visit, Brammertz criticized the work of the BiH Prosecutor's Office, emphasizing that the persistence and professionalism of the prosecutor's offices and courts in BiH need to be further strengthened if success is to be achieved in a delicate and complex process such as war crimes, writes Patria.

Only three days after Brammertz's departure from BiH, members of the Agency for Investigation and Protection (SIPA) arrested 12 persons suspected of war crimes committed in 1992 against victims of Bosniak ethnicity in the area of the Prijedor municipality.

Within the case, 18 persons are suspected, and those arrested are Dušan Milunić, Radomir Stojnić, Radovan Četić, Zoran Stojnić, Željko Grbić, Ilija Zorić, Zoran Milunić, Boško Grujičić, Rade Grujčić, Uroš Grujčić, Rajko Grbić and Rajko Gnjatović.

The suspects are under investigation for having, from 23 to 28 July 1992, as members of the Army of Republika Srpska and the police, and the Crisis Staff, participated in a criminal enterprise directed against the Bosniak population of the village of Zecovi, Prijedor municipality.

On Thursday, 27 November, in the area of Rogatica, the BiH Prosecutor's Office requested detention for Milkan Gojković, who was arrested on suspicion of having committed crimes in the Sarajevo area and of being one of the closest associates of the criminal Veselin Vlahović Batko, who was finally sentenced to 42 years in prison for crimes committed in the Sarajevo neighborhoods of Grbavica, Vraca and Kovačići.

The following Thursday, SIPA, at the order of the BiH Prosecutor's Office, arrested four persons suspected of war crimes in the area of Bosanska Krupa. These are police officers suspected of war crimes against victims of Serbian and, in one case, Croatian ethnicity in the area of Bosanska Krupa in 1995.

Only a day later, on 5 December, at the orders of the BiH Prosecutor's Office and the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office of Serbia, a police operation was carried out simultaneously in the territory of two states, in which 14 persons were deprived of liberty, ten persons in BiH and four in the Republic of Serbia.

Those arrested are suspected of the war crime in Štrpci and Višegrad, when from a train on the Belgrade-Bar line, at least 20 victims, citizens of Serbia and Montenegro of Bosniak ethnicity, one person of Croatian ethnicity and one person of Afro-Asian origin, were abducted and later killed in the territory of BiH, writes Patria.