SREBRENICA: BOZIDAR KUVELJA SENTENCED TO 20 YEARS

THE Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Friday sentenced a former Bosnian Serb policeman to 20 years in prison over his role in the July 1995 Srebrenica Genocide when Serb forces gunned down 8,000 Bosniak men and boys.

Bozidar Kuvelja "participated in the expulsion of the Srebrenica population, detention of men and execution of detainees," judge Jasmina Kosovic said.

Božidar Kuvelja

"He is found guilty for crimes against humanity and the court sentences him to 20 years imprisonment," she said.

The judge said that the 41-year-old defendant, who had pleaded not guilty, "on July 14, 1995, took part in the execution of several dozen men detained at a farm in Kravica," a village near Srebrenica.

The Bosnian court confirmed that the massacre in Srebrenica reached the scale of genocide, but acquitted Kuvelja of genocide charges, saying the prosecutor had failed to prove that he consciously intended to exterminate Bosniaks as an ethno-national group. Prosecutors have announced they will file an appeal.

From 1992-1995 Serbs from heavily militarized villages around Srebrenica had forced approximately 40,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees to live in the Srebrenica ghetto with little or no means of survival. Serb army had slaughtered thousands of Bosniaks in eastern Bosnia 3 years before the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Serb Army stationed around Srebrenica never demilitarized, even though they were required to do so under the 1993 demilitarization agreements. Furthermore, Serbs around Srebrenica constantly attacked neighbouring Bosniak villages, frequently bombarding them from air and with Serbian airplanes.

Close to 300 Bosnian Muslim villages were destroyed around Srebrenica in 1992 with at least 11,000 Bosniaks killed in Central Podrinje (region encompasing Srebrenica) that same year.

In July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of Srebrenica and its surrounding area, where they proceeded to perpetrate the first Genocide on European soil since World War II.

The Srebrenica massacre was designated as Genocide by two top international courts: the UN-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice, both located at the Hague, Netherlands.

Bosnian Serb soldiers and paramilitary thugs financed by Serbia, had separated Bosniak families, forcibly expelled at least 20,000 and summarily executed at least 8,000 Bosniak boys, men, and the elderly. Many were women were brutally raped.

You can read reaction of Mothers of Srebrenica to Kuvelja's Trial Chamber verdict here.