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Bosnian Serb Colonel
Linked to Srebrenica Atrocities Denies Charges
THE HAGUE, Aug 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Bosnian Serb Colonel Dragan Jokic pleaded not guilty Tuesday before the U.N. war crimes tribunal to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Muslims, the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, news agencies reported.
Dressed in a dark gray suit for his first appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the burly 44-year-old officer denied charges of extermination, murder and persecution, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The court indictment said Jokic "participated in a criminal plan" whose purpose was to "detain, capture, summarily execute by firing squad and bury over 5,000 Muslim men and boys" from Srebrenica.
At the time he was chief of engineering in the Zvornik brigade, one of the units which led the Bosnian Serb assault on the U.N.-protected Muslim enclave in eastern Bosnia.
More than 7,000 Muslim men were killed or vanished without a trace after the Bosnian Serb army overran Srebrenica in July 1995.
Mass graves around the enclave are still being uncovered, with the remains of more than 200 Muslims believed to be from Srebrenica exhumed in eastern Bosnia on Monday, AFP reported.
The exhumation work is being conducted by the Muslim-led Commission for Missing Persons in the presence of investigators from the ICTY.
Jokic turned himself in to the U.N. tribunal last Wednesday at the NATO-led SFOR base in Bosnia, and was transferred to the court's detention center in The Hague the same day.
The prosecutor in the Jokic case, Peter McCloskey, told the court that the prosecution wanted to join his case with that of two other Bosnian Serb officers, Vidoje Blagojevic and Dragan Obrenovic, who also faces charges related to Srebrenica.
On August 2nd, the U.N. war crimes tribunal found a former Bosnian Serb general guilty of genocide for his role in Srebrenica, BBC's online service reported.
Radislav Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison, but spared the eight life sentences demanded by prosecutors.
Krstic commanded the Drina corps, which led the assault on the Muslim enclave.
It was the court's first conviction for genocide - the most serious of war crimes - in connection with the Bosnia war, and the toughest sentence it has passed so far.
"In July 1995 General Krstic, individually you agreed to evil. And this is why today this trial chamber convicts you and sentences you to 46 years in prison," said Judge Almiro Rodrigues.
Jim Landale, spokesman for the international tribunal, said the verdict "shows the victims of the Srebrenica massacre that the international community has not forgotten about them".
Krstic, 53, is the first senior official linked with the massacre to be tried by the ICTY.
He was also implicated in the execution of the plans and in attempting to hide the evidence afterwards through the burial of the victims in mass graves.
In a long list of evidence, the tribunal cited orders given to General Krstic to deal with what were described as 3,500 "packages" - the remains of some of the victims.
The prosecution had asked for consecutive life sentences on each of the eight charges that included genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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