A court in Bosnia and Herzegovina has sentenced former Serb soldier Rade Garic to 20 years in prison for committing war crimes against Bosnian Muslims during the 1990s.
The court in the capital city of Sarajevo said that as a member of the Republika Srpska Army Garic was involved in the murder, detention, torture, rape, and exile of Bosniak civilians in Vlasenica in 1992.
It also said that Garic took an active role in the army’s systematic attacks in Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosniak men were brutally murdered in July 1995.
Garic was put on trial in October 2018.
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995 to occupy territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form a state.
The UN Security Council had declared Srebrenica a “safe area” in 1993 but Serb forces, under the orders of Serb General Ratko Mladic, overran the UN zone.
Dutch troops failed to act as Serb forces occupied the area, killing some 2,000 men and boys on July 11 alone.
About 15,000 residents of Srebrenica fled to the surrounding mountains, but Serb troops hunted down and killed 6,000 more people.
Bodies of victims have been found in 570 different places in the country.
In 2007, the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that genocide had been committed in Srebrenica.
General Mladic was later found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
On June 8, 2021, UN tribunal judges upheld a verdict sentencing Mladic to life in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity, extermination, and other war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
