SARAJEVO, Oct 31 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A former Bosnian Serb soldier extradited by France last year was sentenced to 20 years in prison for war crimes by a Sarajevo court on Wednesday, the maximum penalty for the crime.
Radomir Susnjar, 64, was convicted of taking part in the murder of at least
26 Muslim citizens in Visegrad in eastern Bosnia on June 14, 1992, shortly
after the start of the war between the country’s Muslim, Serb and Croat
communities.
Susnjar “committed the crime against the civilian population and this court
sentences him to 20 years in prison,” judge Enida Hadziomerovic said.
About 15 people, including relatives of victims, applauded the verdict
inside the courtroom.
Several survivors of the massacre, in which more than 50 people are
believed to have been killed, testified during the trial.
Susnjar was first arrested in France in 2014 before being released on
supervision. He was then arrested again and extradited to Bosnia in June
2018.
In 2012 two other former Bosnian Serb fighters were imprisoned for the same massacre, in which women, children and elderly were among the victims.
Cousins Milan and Sredoje Lukic were sentenced to life and 27 years
respectively by the former Hague-based international tribunal, the ICTY,
which tried crimes from the wars that unravelled the former Yugoslavia.
Bosnia suffered the heaviest toll. More than 100,000 people perished in the
1992-1995 conflict, including more than 1,500 in the Visegrad area according to Bosnia’s Institute for Missing Persons.
Today the country is still governed by the peace deal struck in 1995 that
carved Bosnia into several zones split along ethnic lines. — NNN-AGENCIES
