World: War crimes tribunal reveals secret Bosnian Serb indictment
Copyright C 2001 Nando Media
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH, Associated Press
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (July 18, 2001 9:46 a.m. EDT) - Hoping to
pressure Bosnian Serb officials into making an arrest, war crimes
prosecutors revealed a secret indictment Wednesday against the nation's
former security chief charged with the genocide of Muslims and Croats
during the Bosnian war.
Stojan Zupljanin, the former head of Serbian security services and
special adviser to wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadic, has been
charged with 12 counts of genocide, torture, murder, persecution,
extermination and deportation for atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina
in 1992, according to his indictment.
Zupljanin, believed by tribunal officials to be near Banja Luka, was
secretly indicted in 1999 along with Gen. Momir Talic and Radoslav
Brdjanin, both of whom were arrested last year and are awaiting trial in
the Netherlands, where the court is based.
Talic, a Bosnian Serb military chief, and Brdjanin, a former deputy
prime minister, pleaded innocent to allegations of genocide and crimes
against humanity in January 2000.
Zupljanin, 49, has been charged with every crime in the tribunal's
statute. Prosecutors allege that Serb forces under his command unleashed
a campaign of terror to rid Serb-dominated regions of non-Serbs and
create a "greater" Serbia.
War crimes prosecutors requested that the indictment be made public to
pressure Bosnian Serb authorities and the NATO-led international
Stabilization Force in Bosnia, known as SFOR, to detain him and transfer
him to the court.
Prosecutors allege that as a leading official - at one point holding the
position of internal affairs minister in the Serb-held Croatian
territory of Krajina - Zupljanin should have prevented the atrocities or
punish the culprits who committed them.
Forces under Zupljanin's command attacked Muslim and Croat villages
throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, murdered the inhabitants and deported
others to concentration camps where they were tortured, sexually
assaulted and starved, the indictment says.
Zupljanin is the 13th official to be openly indicted for genocide by the
U.N. court, established by the Security Council in 1993 to prosecute the
individuals responsible for atrocities during the breakup of the former
Yugoslavia. There has not yet been a genocide conviction.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
