By Daria Sito-Sucic

SARAJEVO, May 18 (Reuters) - The Bosnian war crimes court indicted on Friday a Muslim wartime police commander of torturing Croat prisoners in a Roman Catholic church in southern Bosnia during the brief Croat-Muslim war in 1993.

The court charged Zijad Kurtovic, the ex-commander of the military police platoon of the 4th Corps of the Bosnian Muslim-led army, with war crimes against Croat civilians, prisoners of war and violating the laws and practices of warfare.

Bosnian Muslims and Croats entered the 1992-95 war as allies against Bosnian Serbs but then fought their own war in 1993-94, which was ended by a Washington-brokered peace agreement.

Kurtovic physically and mentally tortured detained Croat civilians and prisoners of war in the All Saints church in Donja Dreznica village, near the town of Mostar. He beat them with bats, crosses and statues of Saints, the indictment said.

"The accused, inter alia, allegedly, forced detainees to eat pages from the Bible and other religious books," the court said in a statement.

Kurtovic also ordered his subordinates to take detainees to the frontlines between the Bosnian army and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) to make a human shield, the indictment said.

"The indictment alleges that on the unknown day in October 1993, the accused and Hasan Delic forced two detained HVO soldiers to perform oral sex," the court said.

The two men then allegedly beat one Croat detainee and extinguished cigarette butts on his neck, it added.

"The indictment alleges that, in October 1993, together with four individuals, the accused participated in smashing up the interior of the Roman Catholic Church of All Saints," the statement said.

The members of the Bosnian army 4th Corps, which operated in the southern Herzegovina region, were reported to have committed cruel acts against Croat civilians from the Dreznica area but few of them have been prosecuted so far.

Local courts have tried some Muslims and Croats for war crimes in Herzegovina but most of the cases were dropped due to a lack of evidence.

The state-wide war crimes court was set up in 2005 in Sarajevo to try thousands of suspects from the 1992-95 war and take over mid- and low-ranking cases from the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague before it closes down in 2010.

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