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

SERB SOLDIER GETS 15 YEARS IN SREBRENICA VIDEO KILLINGS

Serb soldier gets 15 years in videotaped Srebrenica killings

Judge says man showed no mercy in Muslims' deaths

December 30, 2005

BY SNJEZANA VUKIC

ASSOCIATED PRESS

ZAGREB, Croatia -- A Serbian soldier seen killing Muslims [Bosniaks] in a nationally televised video was convicted of war crimes Thursday and sentenced to 15 years in prison, with the judge saying he had shown "no mercy or compassion" for his victims.

Serbian paramilitary member Slobodan Davidovic "actively participated in inhuman treatment, humiliation and liquidation" of six young Muslim [Bosniak] men from Srebrenica in 1995, Zagreb district court Judge Miroslav Sovanj said in his ruling.

He was seen in the video -- shown by prosecutors at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and then broadcast across countries once part of now-defunct Yugoslavia -- helping kill six young Bosnian Muslims [Bosniaks].

Four were shot one by one in the back. Two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn where they, too, were killed.

The images shown earlier this year shocked people in Serbia and Montenegro.

Many of those people were in denial about the actions of Serb troops who overran the enclave of Srebrenica and killed 8,000 Muslim [Bosniak] men and boys after separating them from women in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Davidovic, 52, also was convicted of torturing a Croat prisoner of war during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war.

He was arrested in eastern Croatia in June soon after the footage was shown.

Five others seen in the video were arrested in Serbia and are on trial there.

Davidovic, a Croatian citizen, joined the paramilitary group called during the 1992-95 war in neighboring Bosnia.

The judge rejected Davidovic's claims that he was forced to attend the killings but did not take part in them.

Sovanj said Davidovic returned to his hometown in eastern Croatia after the slayings "as if nothing happened."


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 3:20 PM