Serbs sentenced for videotaped Muslim killings
Source: Reuters
BELGRADE, April 10 (Reuters) - A Serbian war crimes court on Tuesday found four Serb paramilitaries guilty for the 1995 murder of six Bosnian Muslim youths in the last days of the 1992-95 Bosnia war. The sentences for the men, all members of the notorious Scorpions paramilitary group, ranged from 5 years to the maximum sentence of 20 years. One defendant was acquitted. The paramilitaries videotaped the execution-style killing, and circulated the video among themselves. Found by a Serb human rights activist, the video was broadcast in Serbia in 2005, shocking a public which until then had dismissed charges of Serb atrocities in the war as propaganda. The film shows the men taunting the Bosnian Muslim youths before herding them to a clearing in the woods and shooting them in the back, while they smoke and chat casually. "Whatever the ruling, my child is not here," Nura Alispahic, the mother of a 16-year-old victim, told reporters on her way into the court in the Serbian capital Belgrade. "These people will leave jail one day, but my child will never come out of the ground." The killing took place on July 17 1995 in the small town of Trnovo, southeast Bosnia. That week, 150 kilometres (90 miles) away in the town of Srebrenica, Bosnian Serb troops killed some 8,000 Muslim males in Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. Only one of the accused had pleaded guilty. Pero Petrasevic, bodyguard of Scorpions chief Slobodan Medic, said his commander gave the order and he had to carry it out or be killed himself. "We did not have the option to choose whether to participate in the execution or not," he said during the trial. Croatia has already sentenced to 15 years in jail one member of the Scorpions, a Croatian Serb, also identified by the video.
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