A former Bosnian Serb officer, long presented as one of the few soldiers to have disobeyed his superiors during the Srebrenica massacre, was sentenced Friday, October 16 in Sarajevo to nine years in prison for genocide.
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Srecko Acimovic was commanding a battalion of Bosnian Serb forces when more than 8,000 Bosnian (Muslim) men and adolescents were murdered in July 1995. After the inter-communal war, he portrayed himself as the "
hero
" who refused to participate in the war. massacre.
The local press, including newspapers from Sarajevo, had referred to him as a "
good man in times of great evil
".
The former officer, 53, "
helped to commit a joint criminal enterprise (...) consisting in partially exterminating a religious and ethnic group
", however ruled the court in Sarajevo.
"
He thus committed the act of genocide
."
The accused claimed in particular to have refused to obey his superiors who asked him to form a squadron to execute prisoners.
He "
consciously and for years built the reputation of a hero
"
But the court considered that he had "
carried out the order
" of his superiors by organizing the transport by truck, on July 15, 1995, of 818 prisoners gathered in the gymnasium of a school, to the place of their execution, a quarry 70 kilometers north of Srebrenica.
According to the prosecution, he "
consciously and for years built the reputation of a hero
".
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He had been summoned as a witness during several war crimes trials before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in The Hague, to recount his refusal to obey.
He had testified in particular at the trial of Ratko Mladic, military leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the conflict, sentenced to life imprisonment at first instance.
The worst massacre on European soil since the Second World War, the Srebrenica massacre is the only episode in the Bosnian conflict qualified as an act of genocide by international justice.
To date, nearly 6,900 victims of this massacre have been found in more than 80 mass graves and identified.
The inter-communal war killed nearly 100,000 people between 1992 and 1995.