A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina has acquitted Naser Oric, the commander of Bosnian Muslim troops in the Srebrenica area during Bosnia’s 1990s conflict, of war crimes charges.
The state war crimes court in Sarajevo acquitted Oric, 50, of the charge of killing three ethnic Serb prisoners of war in the Srebrenica area in 1992.
Another Bosnian Army soldier, Sabahudin Muhic, was also found not guilty.
Oric was arrested in 2015 Switzerland on a Serbian arrest warrant, and then extradited to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he was put on trial on charges of war crimes committed against Serb prisoners in the Srebrenica area of eastern Bosnia in 1992.
In 2006, Oric was put on trial by the Hague Tribunal, found guilty on one count of the indictment, and sentenced to two years in prison for his “indirect responsibility” for the murder of seven and torture of 11 Serb prisoners in 1992 and 1993.
But two years later, Oric declared innocent by the Hague’s Appeals Chamber, which found that there was “no doubt that grave crimes had been committed against Serbs in Srebrenica from September 1992 until March 1993” – but that “evidence of crimes being committed in insufficient to sentence an individual.”
Republika Srpska’s nationalist leader, President Milorad Dodik, said the verdict was “proof that in Bosnia there is no punishment for criminals [committing crimes] against Serbs.”
Source: b92/rferl
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