SREBRENICA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — In a first for Serbia, police on Wednesday arrested eight men accused of taking part in killing more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslims in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, The Associated Press has learned.
The move could be a milestone toward healing the wounds of Europe’s worst slaughter of civilians since World War II.
Chief Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the AP that all those arrested “are former members of a special brigade of the Bosnian Serb police.”
The massacre took place at a warehouse on the outskirts of Srebrenica, a team of Serbian and Bosnian prosecutors told the AP. Altogether, more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica by the Serbs in 1995 — the only atrocity in Europe to be labeled genocide by the United Nations since World War II.
Serbian prosecutors initially arrested seven suspects in pre-dawn raids Wednesday at different locations in Serbia, then caught the eighth suspect later after an hours-long manhunt. The prosecutors also said they are trying to find more suspects who might be hiding in Bosnia.
The biggest arrest in the sweep was Nedeljko Milidragovic, the commander dubbed “Nedjo the Butcher,” who went on to become a successful businessman in Serbia.
More than 100,000 people were killed and millions left homeless in Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war when Bosnian Serbs, supported by neighboring Serbia, rebelled against Bosnia’s declaration of independence from Serb-led Yugoslavia.
Serbia in the past has put on trial men who took a group of prisoners away from Srebrenica to be killed. And in 2011 it arrested Ratko Mladic — the warlord who masterminded the slaughter — and sent him to an international criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands. The arrests Wednesday are Serbia’s first attempt to bring to justice men who got their hands bloody in the killing machine known as the Srebrenica massacre.
“It is important to stress that this is the first time that our prosecutor’s office is dealing with the mass killings of civilians and war prisoners in Srebrenica,” said Bruno Vekaric, Serbia’s deputy war crimes prosecutor.
But many Serbs still view as heroes their wartime leaders — including Mladic and former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, who are on trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal — and think they were victims of a Western plot.
That makes the current campaign to detain the triggermen deeply sensitive. But Serbia’s conservative government is allowing the prosecutions to move forward in part because it’s eager to join the European Union.
There was no reaction from the suspects’ families or attorneys, but Serbs from Milidragovic’s Bosnian hometown of Sokolac were furious. “Enough with this arresting of innocent Serbs,” said Milorad Tomovic. “It is time to arrest Muslims so they can finally face justice.”
