DID YOU KNOW?  -- Three years before the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide, Serbs torched Bosniak villages and killed at least 3,166 Bosniaks around Srebrenica. In 1993, the UN described the besieged situation in Srebrenica as a "slow-motion process of genocide." In July 1995, Serbs forcibly expelled 25,000 Bosniaks, brutally raped many women and girls, and systematically killed 8,000+ men and boys (DNA confirmed).

30 December, 2005

CROATIAN COURT JAILS SREBRENICA KILLER

Croatian court jails Srebrenica killer

ZAGREB (Reuters) - A Croatian Serb recognised in a harrowing war video was jailed for 15 years on Thursday for killing unarmed Bosnian Muslim [Bosniak] prisoners during the Srebrenica massacre, state news agency Hina reported.

A court in the Croatian capital found Slobodan Davidovic guilty of killing six prisoners after Bosnian Serb troops overran the Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia in July 1995.

Davidovic, 57, was arrested in June after he was identified in a home video filmed in 1995 that showed the prisoners being killed by a Serb paramilitary unit called the Scorpions.

"Testimonies and the video of the executions, in which Davidovic was recognised, clearly show that he and the others had taken part in killing the Muslims," presiding judge Miroslav Sovanj said in explaining the verdict.

Sovanj said Davidovic had been "a mature and experienced man when he committed the crimes. After the war and his stint in the Scorpions, he returned home as if nothing had happened," Hina quoted him as saying.

The Scorpions took part in the capture of Srebrenica and the killing of up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in 1995, in Europe's worst single atrocity since World War Two.

Five of his fellow ex-Scorpions, seen on the same video, appeared before a Belgrade court on murder charges earlier this month. They were arrested after the video was broadcast on Serbian television in June.

The video shocked Serbia, which had previously denied knowledge of the Srebrenica massacre and the Serb involvement. The video showed camouflaged men, joking, smoking, torturing and then shooting unarmed young men in a clearing in the woods.

Davidovic, a Serb from the eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, was also found guilty of torturing Croatian soldiers in 1991 at the start of Croatia's independence war against rebel Serbs backed by the Yugoslav army.


keywords: Srebrenica genocide, Srebrenica massacre, Srebrenica video, Srebrenica videotaped killings, Srebrenica video trial, Srebrenica, Bosnia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosniaks, Bosniacs, Bosnian Muslims

posted by Srebrenica Genocide at 4:06 PM