BOSNIA-WAR CRIMES/ARREST-REAX Srebrenica residents angered by arrest of Bosnian Muslim wartime commander

Record ID: 151299

  • Title: BOSNIA-WAR CRIMES/ARREST-REAX Srebrenica residents angered by arrest of Bosnian Muslim wartime commander
  • Date: 11th June 2015
  • Summary: TUZLA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (JUNE 11, 2015) (REUTERS) WOMEN FROM SREBRENICA AND SURVIVORS OF 1995 MASSACRE WALKING DOWN STREET VARIOUS OF WOMEN AND MEN CARRYING BANNERS WITH PHOTOGRAPHS OF THOSE KILLED IN 1995 MASSACRE WOMEN HOLDING BANNERS AND PHOTOGRAPHS (SOUNDBITE) (Bosnian) NURA BEGOVIC, WHO LOST HER BROTHER IN THE 1995 SREBRENICA MASSACRE, SAYING: "That man [Oric] i
  • Embargoed: 26th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVADXD5WKGM7WSNHSXJLP6D5TIJG
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: EDITORS PLEASE NOTE: EDIT CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3
    Women from Srebrenica reacted bitterly to the arrest of a Bosnian Muslim wartime commander on Wednesday (June 10) on a warrant issued by Serbia over the alleged killing of Serbs during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
    Oric was arrested in Thonex in the Swiss canton of Geneva on Wednesday based on a request submitted by the Serbian authorities on Feb. 3, 2014, Switzerland's Federal Office of Justice (FOJ) said in a statement. Swiss authorities said on Thursday (June 11) that he will contest his extradition to Serbia.
    In the Bosnian city of Tuzla, news of Oric's arrest disappointed the dozens from Srenbrenica who gather on the eleventh day of every month to remind the authorities of their struggle to find the remains of the 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed and to bring those responsible to justice.
    "That man [Oric] is innocent, and there are others who committed crimes. You see for how many years have we been walking here demanding arrests, but look how few of them have been arrested. This is all done by Serbia, we know their tactics and their lobby is very strong," demonstrator Nura Begovic, who lost her brother in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, said.
    "These are all political games. Each time ahead of July 11 [Srebrenica massacre anniversary], something like this happens. This time it's the straw that broke the camel's back," Hajra Catic, who is still searching for the remains of her son killed in 1995, said.
    In July 1995, towards the end of the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces swept into a U.N.-designated "safe haven" from where they took 8,000 Muslim men and boys to be executed in the days that followed.
    Serbian authorities suspect that between 1992 and 1995, Oric and other members of the Bosnian Muslim forces attacked Serbian villages in the Srebrenica region to drive out the civilian population. The arrest request refers to an attack on Zalazje in which nine people were killed in July 1992, the FOJ said.
    Oric, then a Bosnian army commander, was in charge of organizing the defense of the town.
    Two decades after the end of the Bosnian war, the country remains politically and ethnically divided, comprising a Muslim Bosniak-Croatian federation and a Bosnian Serb republic.
    Underscoring those divisions, Bosnian Serb lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a resolution describing the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of the Muslim men and boys as a genocide, saying the motion was an attack on their community.
    The Srebrenica massacre, widely viewed as the worst atrocity on European soil since World War Two, was the culmination of an ethnic cleansing drive by the forces of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic aimed at carving out a Serbian state from ethnically mixed Bosnia.
    Oric was indicted by The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against Serbs but was acquitted of all charges in 2008, a ruling that angered the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia, who see the tribunal as biased against them.
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