Bosnian Court Sentences Former Serb Soldier to 35 years in Prison for War Crimes
BELGRADE, Serbia – Bosnia’s state court has sentenced former Serb soldier Predrag Bastah to 35 years in prison for committing war crimes during the 1990s.
The court in the capital Sarajevo sentenced Bastah to 20 years in prison. But as he is already serving a sentence for other wartime crimes, the court imposed a combined sentence of 35 years.
He was charged for participating in the killing of 34 Bosniak Muslim civilians in the Susica concentration and detention camp for Bosniaks and other non-Serbs in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bastah was a member of the Republika Srpska Army (VRS). He was found guilty of being part of a widespread and systematic attack on Muslim Bosniak civilians in Vlasenica in 1992 killing 34 Bosniak civilians by directing them to the place where they were killed.
Goran Viskovic, a former member of the Republika Srpska Army, was also sentenced to 18 years in prison for crimes against humanity.
About 2,800 Bosniak Muslims were killed in Vlasenica in 1992, 10% of them women. Those killed included 188 minors.
In 2005, the Hague tribunal had also sentenced the commander of this camp, a member of the Republika Srpska Army, Dragan Nikolic, to 20 years in prison for killing, raping and torturing Bosniak Muslim detainees in Susica.
The genocide in Bosnia includes the Srebrenica massacre and other crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) during the Bosnian War of 1992–1995. The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians by VRS units.
The ethnic cleansing campaign included executions, unlawful confinement, mass rape, sexual assault, torture, plunder and destruction of private and public property, inhumane treatment of civilians, targeted killings, deportation, destruction of homes and businesses and places of worship. The acts have been recognized as acts of genocide by the UN tribunal which concluded that “some perpetrators held the intent to physically destroy the protected groups of Bosnian Muslims.”.
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