Convicted war criminal to teach at Serbian academy

A former Serb general convicted of war crimes and two other commanders who took part in a bloody crackdown against Kosovo’s Albanians in the 1990s will be invited to teach at the Balkan country’s military academy, Serbia’s defence minister said Thursday.

Defence Minister Aleksandar Vulin has praised former Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison by a UN war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed by Serb troops in Kosovo during the 1998-99 violence that left over 10,000 people killed and nearly one million chased from homes.

The bloodshed stopped only after a 78-day NATO bombardment. Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo’s independence declared in 2008.

Vulin told Serbia’s state TV on Thursday that Lazarevic, current army chief-ofstaff Gen. Ljubisa Dikovic and former Gen. Bozidar Delic are “exceptional people” who would be sought by “any military academy in the world.”

Lazarevic, who commanded Serb troops in Kosovo during the crackdown, was released from prison in 2015 after serving two-thirds of his sentence. Both Dikovic and Delic, who also fought in the former Serbian province, have been accused by human rights groups of war crimes, but they were never tried or convicted.

Vulin said that they are to “relay their war experiences” to the military academy cadets.