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Bosnian War Veterans Protest Arrest Of Wartime Commander


Several hundred war veterans in Bosnia-Herzegovina have protested the arrest in Switzerland of a Bosnian Muslim wartime commander.

Swiss authorities arrested Naser Oric on June 10 on a request from Serbia.

Belgrade accuse him of killing nine Serbian civilians in 1992 in a town near Srebrenica where Serbian forces killed more than 8,000 Muslim Bosnian men and boys in 1995.

Protesters in Sarajevo on June 12 demanded his immediate release as he was acquitted in 2008 by a UN tribunal, which ruled he had no command over the forces that committed war crimes.

Swiss authorities say they will examine whether Serbia's case against Oric differs in any way from the one on which the UN tribunal previously ruled.

Two decades after the end of the Bosnian war, the country remains politically and ethnically divided, comprising a Muslim Bosniak-Croatian federation and a Bosnian Serb republic.

Based on reporting by AP

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