Three Bosnian Muslims Indicted For Wartime Killings

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnia's war crimes prosecutor today indicted three former Bosnian Muslim soldiers over the killing of more than 20 Croat civilians and prisoners of war during the Muslim-Croat conflict in 1993.

Mensur Memic, Dzevad Salcin, and Senad Hakalovic are three of six people, including two senior officers, arrested since September on charges of crimes against civilians and prisoners of war and violations of the laws and practices of warfare.

"According to the indictment, the accused participated in the capture and shooting of civilians from the Trusina village and of captured Croat soldiers who had earlier surrendered," the office of prosecutor Milorad Barasin said in a statement.

The trio were members of the special military unit "Zulfikar" that is believed to have carried out the mass killing of 19 civilians and three Croat soldiers during an attack on the village in southern Bosnia on April 16, 1993, it said.

During the same attack four civilians, including two children, were wounded, it added.

Bosnian Muslims and Croats entered the 1992-95 war as allies against Bosnian Serbs but then fought their own war in 1993-94, which was ended by a Washington-brokered peace agreement.

The Bosnian state war crimes court was set up in 2005 to try thousands of suspects from the 1992-95 war and take over mid- and low-ranking cases from the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.