BOSNIA ARRESTS 2 SUSPECTS IN WAR CRIMES CASE.Byline: Chris Hedges Christopher L. Hedges (born 18 September, 1956 in St. Johnsbury, Vermont) is a journalist and author, specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and society. The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times The Bosnian government has detained de·tain tr.v. de·tained, de·tain·ing, de·tains 1. To keep from proceeding; delay or retard. 2. To keep in custody or temporary confinement: two Muslims who were indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. by the international war crimes tribunal for the murder of Serbian prisoners, the first time any of the republics from the former Yugoslavia have honored arrest warrants from the special court in The Hague. The two men, Hazim Delic and Esad Landzo, were indicted by the tribunal for crimes allegedly committed at the Celebici prison camp in 1992, near the central Bosnian town of Konjic. Bosnian government officials said the men, in custody in Sarajevo, would be handed over to the tribunal within a few days. The arrest of the men, which contrasts with the unkept promises from Serbia and Croatia to cooperate with the tribunal, followed an indictment by the court March 22 against three Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat. The four men were charged with beating and torturing to death about 30 Serbian detainees at the camp. The three Muslims were the first Muslims to be indicted by the tribunal. The indictment was also the first in which the court charged Muslims or Croats with crimes mainly aimed at Bosnian Serbs. Altogether, the tribunal has indicted 57 suspects - 46 Serbs, eight Croats and three Muslims. The Celebici camp was run by Muslim and Croat forces in Konjic who were then allied in the fight against the Serbs. The roughly 200 men held in the camp, a base that once belonged to the old Yugoslav army, were local Serbs who had been rounded up and disarmed. Many were elderly or infirm INFIRM. Weak, feeble. 2. When a witness is infirm to an extent likely to destroy his life, or to prevent his attendance at the trial, his testimony de bene esge may be taken at any age. 1 P. Will. 117; see Aged witness.; Going witness. . The Serbs in 1991 made up 15 percent of the 43,636 residents in the Konjic municipality. The prisoners were held in two warehouses, as well as a narrow, dank dank adj. dank·er, dank·est Disagreeably damp or humid. See Synonyms at wet. [Middle English, probably of Scandinavian origin. underground atomic bunker called ``the tunnel.'' Serbian survivors said Muslim soldiers A Muslim soldier is a Muslim who has engaged in war, or is trained in the art of war. Some of the more contemporary belong to state or national military forces and are more accurately described as soldiers. entered the base at night and beat prisoners with clubs, rifle butts, wooden planks, shovels and pieces of cable. At times the Muslim troops put gas masks over the faces of the victims to muffle their screams, eyewitnesses said. Some of the Muslim troops wore hoods while carrying out the beatings, former prisoners said. ``If you had said something bad to one of them before the war or had done something to him, you had to pay for it now,'' said a Serb who was in the camp and who asked to remain unidentified. The prisoners, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. human rights investigators, were fed bread and water. They sometimes went for one or two days without food, rarely got water to bathe and slept on the concrete floors without blankets. Many were forced to defecate def·e·cate v. To void feces from the bowels. def  e·ca tion n. on the floor. Investigators say that in May and August about 30 prisoners died from ``bestial'' beatings. A few others, they said, were shot or stabbed to death by the Muslim troops. Several victims were elderly, these investigators said. The tribunal's indictment says the Celebici camp was shut down in the autumn of 1992. Most of the surviving prisoners were released in prisoner-of-war exchanges. Zejnil Delalic, the former commander of the Bosnian forces in Konjic, who was also indicted, was arrested in Munich in March. He has been charged with general responsibility for the war crimes at Celebici. Germany is expected to hand him over to the tribunal soon. Zdrakvo Mucic, the ethnic Croat who was the camp's commander and who was listed in the March indictment as responsible for 14 murders, was arrested in Vienna. |
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