Bosnia Indicts Serb Ex-Military Commander For Wartime Killings

People gather in the historical center of Sarajevo, on May 31, 2017, in a re-enactment of inmates being imprisoned at the "Manjaca" concentration camp during the wars of the early 1990s.

Bosnian prosecutors have indicted a Bosnian Serb military commander on charges of killing Muslim civilians during the country's wars of the 1990s.

Dragoljub Kunarac was the commander of a special unit of the Bosnian Serb army who had already been imprisoned for 28 years by the United Nations war crimes tribunal on rape and enslavement charges.

Bosnian prosecutors said in a statement on December 5 that Kunarac was accused of taking part in the killing of at least six people and the persecution of Muslim civilians from villages around the eastern town of Foca in July 1992.

Foca was a focal point for the mass persecution and killing of Muslims by Bosnian Serb forces, who were seeking to establish an exclusively ethnic Serb region. These forces set up detention camps in which women and young girls were raped and enslaved.

The statement said Kunarac, 58, was also accused of taking part in looting and burning Muslim homes.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia imprisoned Kunarac in 2001 for 28 years for torture, rape, and enslavement. He is serving that sentence in a German prison.

The tribunal's ruling was the first case in which it had concluded that rape and enslavement were crimes against humanity.

Bosnia's state court must still confirm the indictment against him, before the case can proceed.

Based on reporting by Reuters