prijava
SARAJEVO, December 13 (FENA) - Former paramilitary leader Milan Lukić, who is already serving a jail sentence for war crimes, was charged with involvement in the abduction and killing of 20 passengers seized from a train in Štrpci in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993.
The Bosnian state prosecution on Friday charged Milan Lukić, the wartime leader of the Avengers paramilitary group, with crimes against 20 passengers who were abducted from a train at Štrpci station near Višegrad in eastern Bosnia in February 1993 and then murdered.
The prosecution said in a statement that “18 Bosniaks, citizens of Serbia and Montenegro from the Sandžak area”, plus one Croat from Belgrade and one “unknown person of Arab descent”, were seized from the train which was halted at the station by Bosnian Serb soldiers as it was traveling from Belgrade to Bar in Montenegro.
Lukić, along with several Bosnian Serb soldiers, then “participated in taking the abducted people to a school in Prelovo, where they were beaten, tortured, abused and robbed”, the statement said, BIRN reports.
They were then taken to the village of Musići, where Lukić “personally participated in the murder of the abducted people, whose bodies were dumped in the Drina River”.
The remains of four of the victims have been found, but the others are still missing.
Lukić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague Tribunal in 2012 for participating in the murders and expulsions of Bosniak civilians in Višegrad in 1992 and 1993, but not for the Štrpci deaths.
He was convicted of involvement in two of the war’s most notorious massacres, in which a total of 120 women, children and elderly people in Pionirska Street in Višegrad and the town’s Bikavac neighborhood were burned alive in June 1992.
He is currently serving his sentence in Estonia.
Ten former Bosnian Serb soldiers are currently on trial at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo for the Štrpci abductions and massacre.
Another ex-soldier, Mićo Jovićić, was sentenced to five years in prison after concluding a plea agreement with the Bosnian prosecution.
Five more Bosnian Serbs are currently on trial for the same crime in Belgrade.
In September 2002, a court in Montenegro sentenced Avengers paramilitary group member Nebojša Ranisavljević to 15 years in prison for taking part in the abduction and killings.
The Lukić indictment has been forwarded to the Bosnian State Court for confirmation.
(FENA) S. R.
