Serbia Jails Bosnian Serb Soldier for Srebrenica Massacre
(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) A Serbian court sentenced Brano Gojkovic to ten years in prison on Thursday after he admitted he was part of a group of troops who killed hundreds of Bosniak civilians in July 1995 in the aftermath of Bosnian Serb forces seizing the town of Srebrenica.
Gojkovica former member of the Bosnian Serb Army’s 10th Detachment is one of seven members of his unit who have so far been convicted of shooting around 800 civilians at a military farm in Branjevo on July 16 1995. Bosnian courts sentencedfour of them to a total of 112 years in prison for crimes against humanity. The verdict said they brutally killed the Bosniak men and boys over the course of one day only taking short breaks to drink beer and eat food in the field where shootings took place. Two other members of the unit Marko Boskic and Drazen Erdemovic admitted their guilt and were sentenced to ten and five years in prison respectively. A further member of the unit Aleksandar Cvetkovicwas found not guilty of genocide by the Bosnian court last year. The Bosnian prosecution expressed dissatisfaction with the Serbian court’s ruling saying that Gojkovic should have been given a longer prison sentence because he took part in “one of the largest executions in the Srebrenica genocide”. They also said that Gojkovic should have been tried in Sarajevo because he “does not have Serbian citizenship”. “We are especially unhappy that Gojkovic did not testify within his plea deal and that the plea agreement was made soon after Bosnia filed an extradition request. Families of Srebrenica victims have also said that they are unhappy with the sentence” the Bosnian prosecution said in a statement. The statement also urged Serbian to pick up the pace in other Srebrenica-related investigations. “There are other members of the Bosnian Serb Army’s 10th Detachment Zoran Obrenovic alias Maljiv Ratko Mladic’s assistant Dragomir Pecanac and the commander of the Detachment Milorad Pelemis – who has given TV interviews – in Serbia” it said. “In the interests of justice we call on the Serbian judiciary to finally prosecute these men or extradite them to Bosnia” it added. According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s indictment against Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic the 10th Detachment was under his command.
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