Serbia charges 8 over Srebrenica massacre

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor on Thursday charges eight men with participation in the 1995 slaughter of some 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

Arrested in March, the eight are accused of ordering and participating in the execution of several hundred Muslims in a single day at a warehouse in the eastern Bosnian town of Kravica, near Srebrenica, a prosecutor’s statement says.

If found guilty, they face the maximum penalty of 20 years in jail.

The indictment is a “message that there will be no impunity for war crimes and that the victims will not be forgotten,” prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic tells AFP.

Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed and their bodies dumped in mass graves during the massacre, which became a symbol of the horror of the 1990s Balkan wars that accompanied the collapse of the former Yugoslavia.

— AFP