(5 Dec 2014) The head of a Bosnian association of women raped during the wars in the 1990s hailed on Friday the arrest of 15 people on suspicion of committing war crimes.
Bakira Hasecic, who claims she was raped in 1992, called the decision to arrest the men one of the happiest days of her life.
On Friday, Serbian and Bosnian officers carried out pre-dawn sweeps which netted five suspects in Serbia and 10 in Bosnia, including the brother of a jailed warlord, ex-militia members and a former Bosnian Serb general who commanded the military in the area.
The detained suspects are alleged to have been involved in the case of the Strpci massacre of 27 February 1993, in which 19 men were snatched off a train at the height of the Balkans conflict.
The Associated Press obtained exclusive investigative documents in the probe, which is backed by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
Together with witness testimony, they provide the first detailed look at a tragedy whose wounds fester even today because the killers were not identified and the victims' families not compensated.
The documents and witness accounts say the train made an unscheduled stop at the station of Strpci, a remote outpost in eastern Bosnia on the border with Serbia.
A group of Bosnian Serb militiamen identified 18 Bosnian Muslims and one Croat through their names and carted them off.
The men were herded into a military truck, which took them to a village school.
Inside the gym, the militiamen stripped the captives.
Then they beat them with rifle butts.
Drenched in blood, their hands tied with wire, the men were taken by truck to an empty house near the Drina river.
There, they were shot in the back of the head.
The Strpci massacre was part of a conflict which left more than 100,000 people dead and millions displaced.
Although all sides have been accused of war crimes, historians say Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia carried out the worst atrocities in an effort to create an ethnically pure territory.
Find out more about AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
Twitter: [ Ссылка ]
Facebook: [ Ссылка ]
Instagram: [ Ссылка ]
You can license this story through AP Archive: [ Ссылка ]
