Bosnian ‘Srebrenica defender’ acquitted of war crimes
SARAJEVO: Former Bosnian military commander Naser Oric, hailed by supporters as the heroic “defender of Srebrenica”, was yesterday acquitted by a local court of war crimes during the country’s 1990s conflict.
“Naser Oric and” his fellow fighter “Sabahudin Muhic are acquitted of charges of having committed during the war ... crimes against prisoners,” judge Tihomir Lukes said.
The two men were tried for the killing of three Serb prisoners in the Srebrenica area at the start of the 1992- 95 war, which pitted the country’s Serb, Muslim and Croat communities against each other.
The acquittal means that the case is closed.
Awaiting the verdict, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Sarajevo court carrying banners that read: “Heroes, not criminals!”
Oric, 51, is celebrated by fellow Bosnian Muslims – known as Bosniaks – for commanding the defence of Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in a 1995 massacre that was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
Bosnian Muslim military figures have already been tried and condemned in Bosnia for crimes committed during the inter- ethnic conf lict, but none of them had Oric’s aura or importance.
“The proceedings against Oric are very sensitive,” Erna Mackic, a journalist specialised in war crimes cases, warned ahead of the verdict.
“Whatever the judgement is, it will be strongly criticised by one of the parties that will be unhappy,” she told AFP.
The Balkan country remains deeply split along ethnic lines. Half of its population of 3.5 million are Muslims, while ethnic Serbs and Croats make about 30 and 15 percent respectively.
In 2008 Oric was acquitted on appeal by the UN war crimes court on charges of not doing enough to protect Serb prisoners of war.
Unhappy with the verdict, Belgrade in 2014 launched an international warrant, which eventually saw him extradited to his home country to face the current charges against him.
His subsequent acquittal in October 2017 outraged Serb victims’ groups. A retrial was ordered for procedural reasons.
Oric’s troops resisted a more than three-year- long the siege of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic’s soldiers.
But while Oric left the ill-fated town along with some of his officers for a meeting in Sarajevo, the UN-protected Muslim enclave was captured in July 1995.
Serb forces slaughtered more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the days that followed Srebrenica’s fall.
The atrocity was deemed genocide by the international justice.
The UN court last year sentenced Mladic to life imprisonment including for the Srebrenica massacre while Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in jail.
But many ethnic Serbs perceive Oric as a “butcher” responsible for crimes during attacks on their villages in the Srebrenica area to drive them out of their homes. — AFP