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Ahmici Muslims Shocked by U.N. Acquittal of War Crimes Suspects
SARAJEVO, Oct 23 (News Agencies) - Muslim survivors of a brutal massacre in 1993 of some 116 Muslims in the Bosnian village of Ahmici were shocked by Tuesday's acquittal by a U.N. tribunal of three men they blame for deaths of their relatives and friends, news agencies reported.
When she learned that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) freed three Bosnian Croats from jail for the 1993 attack, one of the survivors of the killings, Nurija Ahmic, broke down in tears, gasping for breath.
Contacted by phone in the central Bosnian town, she kept repeating that it was "horrible, simply horrible."
"Don't they [the ICTY] know what happened in Ahmici, how many old people and children were killed here? They might not care about our children, but is this the world they want their children to live in?" she told Agence France-Presse (AFP) through her tears.
The 1993 killing of civilians at Ahmici has been considered one the worst atrocities committed in the war between Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims between 1992 and 1993.
During the Bosnian Croat police attack on the village, many victims, including women and children, were burned alive in their own homes.
The court also reduced sentences it had earlier handed down to two other Bosnian Croats for the massacre, described by a judge as "one of the most vicious illustrations of man's inhumanity to man".
Nurija's husband, Husein Ahmic, was one of the prosecution witnesses when brothers Mirjan and Zoran Kupreskic and their cousin, Vlatko Kupreskic, were sentenced last year to 10, eight and six years in jail.
All three appealed their sentences and were acquitted Tuesday.
"My 72-year-old father and 63-year-old mother were killed here. I was a witness on their [the Kupreskic] trial, but there is nothing more I could do. I wish I was dead," Husein said.
"We know that the Kupreskics were killing people in Ahmici, we saw them do it," Nurija added.
Nurija said she and her husband fled Ahmici in 1993 during the attack on the village, but Husein's parents had been too old to flee. They were burned alive in their home, she said.
Nurija and Husein returned to Ahmici in 1998. And another 13 families have returned since the end of the 1992-95 war, she said.
"Kupreskic's house is just down the road from mine. Am I expected to see them every day on return from work? I do not know how I could survive this," Husein said in a desperate voice.
"I do not know what to say. People spend 15 years in prison for killing just one person, they killed hundreds and now they are free," Medzida Ahmic, one of the Ahmici massacre survivors, told AFP.
"I do not know how could we all now live here together. I can't stand even just thinking about seeing them [the Kupreskics] every day for the rest of my life," she added.
Meanwhile, friends and relatives of Vlatko Kupreskic gathered in his house in Ahmici Tuesday to celebrate the decision, his sister Jelena told AFP over the phone.
"Mirjan, Zoran and Vlatko were innocent. They were taken to The Hague for no reason," Jelena said.
"We feel great and are celebrating and I could not care less... about how they [the Muslims] feel," she added.
Meanwhile, a Sarajevo court on Wednesday sentenced Bosnian Serb Dragan Stankovic to 10 years in jail for crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, in proceedings approved by the U.N. war crimes tribunal, a court official said.
Stankovic "was found guilty of raping a number of Bosnian [Muslim] women and of expulsions of non-Serb civilians in the region of Foca," in eastern Bosnia, judge Davorin Jukic said.
Police of the Muslim-Croat entity in Bosnia arrested the Bosnian Serb last year, and the ICTY gave its approval for him to be tried before a local court. The trial started in November last year.
Stankovic has a right to appeal to the Supreme Court of the Muslim-Croat entity, Jukic explained.
Following the Dayton peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia, the country was split in two entities, the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
Local courts in countries of the former Yugoslavia can prosecute individuals indicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity only if given the go-ahead by the ICTY, which sits in The Hague.
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