General gets 33 years for Sarajevo shelling

THE UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia yesterday sentenced former Bosnian Serb general Dragomir Milosevic to 33 years’ imprisonment for the shelling of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.

Judges found Milosevic — no relation to former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic — guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and inhumane acts by troops of his Sarajevo Romanija Corps (SRK) unit of the Bosnian Serb Army.

Human rights organisations estimate that about 12,000 people, including 1,500 children, were killed in the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo in fighting and sniper attacks during the conflict. Thousands more struggled daily to survive, in conditions compared to World War Two.

The siege of Sarajevo began in April 1992 and lasted until November 1995.

“The evidence discloses an horrific tale of the encirclement and entrapment of a city,” said Judge Patrick Robinson, before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia gave one of its harshest sentences yet.

“There was no safe place in Sarajevo, one could be killed or injured anywhere and anytime,” he said.

Milosevic surrendered to the tribunal in December 2004, but pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors sought a life sentence.

Milosevic, 65, became commander of the SRK in August 1994, taking over from Stanislav Galic, already serving life imprisonment for his role in the siege.

Milosevic’s SRK troops used skilled snipers as well as mortars and modified air bombs, highly inaccurate weapons, to deliberately target the city’s civilians, the Judge Robinson said.

Milosevic introduced the modified air bombs and decided on the placement of launchers. Each time such a bomb was launched the accused was playing with the lives of the citizens of Sarajevo, the judge said.

During Milosevic’s 15-month command, hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands maimed, prosecutors said. In one example they named a mother who was hit by a sniper’s bullet, which passed through her stomach and hit her seven-year-old son in the head, killing him on the spot.

In another attack, a mortar shell hit people queuing for bread by the city market in August 1995, killing dozens and wounding almost 80.