Bosnian Muslim to face war crimes trial at UN tribunal

A Bosnian Muslim army commander was handed over to the UN tribunal in The Hague yesterday to face allegations of war crimes against Serbs.

Naser Oric was captured by Nato-led forces on Thursday in the northern Bosnian city of Tuzla. Before the war, Mr Oric, 35, worked as a bodyguard for Slodoban Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president. But he disappeared in1990 and resurfaced as Muslim fighter in Bosnia. He becamethe wartime army commander in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, the site of the worst massacre of civilian Muslims during the 1992-1995 war.

Although widely praised in Bosnia for defending Muslims from Serb attackers, Mr Oric faces charges of "murder, cruel treatment, wanton destruction and plunder", the tribunal said.

He will be brought before a judge on Tuesday and asked to plead to the charges. About 200 people, mostly women from Srebrenica who survived the 1995 executions, blocked a street to protest against the arrest. They said other war crimes suspects, such as Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, were the true culprits. "They arrested Naser while the real criminals are now probably laughing at us and at the thousands of victims who are still missing," said Aljo Savanovic, 19, who lives in Tuzla as a refugee.

Other Tuzla residents condemned Mr Oric as a gangster and said they were happy to see him go. "With all due respect to the Srebrenica widows, I have to say that if Naser Oric is guilty, he has to face justice, like everybody else has to," said Ado Imamovic, 23, a student.

Captain Dale MacEachern, a spokesman for the Nato-led peace-keeping force, said people such as Mr Oric, when allowed to walk free, "impeded the progress and development of Bosnia-Herzegovina". He added: They force people to live in the past and they ensure their own freedom by means of blackmail, fear and extortion.

Mr Oric's indictment alleges that between June 1992 and March 1993 he and his forces participated in the torture and beating of Serb prisoners at Srebrenica police station and pillaged 15 towns and hamlets predominantly inhabited by Serbs. "In some instances, prisoners were beaten to death, the document says. "Physical abuse included beatings by various objects including wooden sticks, wooden poles, steel pipes, metal bars, baseball bats, rifle butts, bare fists, kicking with boots and forced teeth extractions with rusty pliers."

Serbs blame Mr Oric and his forces for killing about 2,000 Serb civilians from villages around Srebrenica during those raids, including the so-called "Bloody Christmas" massacre of January 1993, when dozens of women and children died in the village of Kravice.

The United Nations tribunal for former Yugoslavia, which sits at The Hague, was established in 1993 to prosecute those responsible for war crimes during a decade of ethnic violence in the Balkans.

Although it has mainly prosecuted Serbs, it has also launched proceedings against a small number of Croats and Muslims accused of wartime atrocities. (AP)