A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina has convicted seven former soldiers and acquitted their commander for war crimes in the kidnapping and execution of 20 civilians during the war in Bosnia nearly 30 years ago.
The 20 civilians -- mostly Muslim men -- were tortured and killed by Serb paramilitaries after being removed from a train during the 1990s war.
The Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina on October 21 found the seven former members of a Republika Srpska army infantry brigade guilty and sentenced each to 13 years in prison for committing a war crime.
The incident started at the Strpci train station near the border with Bosnia on February 27, 1993. Armed Serbs stopped a train there and took off 20 passengers, mostly Muslims, and brought the men to Visegrad in eastern Bosnia, where they tortured and killed all of them, dumping their bodies in the Drina River.
All the victims were from the Muslim-dominated Sandzak area in western Serbia, which borders Bosnia.
The remains of only four victims have been found to date. A search for the remains of the others continues.
The seven former soldiers -- Obrad Poluga, Novak Poluga, Radojica Ristic, Petko Indic, Miodrag Mitasinovic, Dragan Sekovic, and Oliver Krsmanovic -- were found guilty of complicity in the crime.
Luka Dragicevic, the former commander of the infantry brigade the men belonged to, was acquitted.
Judge Vesna Jesenkovic said that the Bosnian Prosecutor-General’s Office did not prove that Dragicevic issued an order to torture and kill civilians.
"The prosecution proved that Dragicevic received reports or orders but did not prove how he later acted on those orders. No witness said that he informed Dragicevic about the event -- that is, about the killings of civilians," said the judge.
Bakira Hasecic, president of Women Victims of War, told RFE/RL that she was shocked when she heard that Dragicevic had been acquitted.
“Everything that happened happened under his command,” Hasecic told RFE/RL.
She also said that 13 years in prison for “such brutal murders of Serbian citizens” was “no punishment at all."
Miodrag Stojanovic, the lawyer who represented Dragicevic, said that justice had been served in his case but expressed “mixed feelings” about the 13-year sentences handed to the former soldiers, calling them “inappropriate” because it had not been confirmed that any of them did the shooting, though they did participate at some point in the transfer of the men.
Bosnia's 1992-95 war between its Croats, Muslims, and Serbs claimed around 100,000 lives.
