Bosnia Charges Mayor, Three Other Serbs With War Crimes

Prosecutors in Bosnia-Herzegovina says they have charged a Bosnian Serb mayor and three other former police officers with war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The Prosecutor-General's Office said on December 6 that the four were indicted over the murder and disappearance of at least 22 Bosnian Muslims in the Vlasenica area in eastern Bosnia in 1992 and 1993.

Miroslav Kraljevic, the mayor of the Vlasenica municipality, and the three other suspects are also accused of “unlawful detention, torture, and abuse of several dozen people in several detention facilities,” a statement said.

"In spring 1993, almost all the Muslim population from this region was expelled," it said.

Reports said Kraljevic previously served as a lawmaker in Bosnia’s Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, as a member of the nationalist Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the party of Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik.

Bosnia's war resulted in the death of an estimated 100,000 people and the displacement of some 2.6 million more.

As part of the 1995 Dayton accords that mostly ended the violence, Bosnia was broken into two constituent states: a Muslim-Croat federation and Republika Srpska.

With reporting by AFP and BalkanInsight