Swiss arrest former Bosnian muslim commander Oric
Former commander of Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica, Naser Oric (C), arrives at Sarajevo International Airport on July 4, 2008 after he was cleared of war crimes (AFP Photo/Elvis Barukcic)Swiss border guards on Wednesday arrested former Bosnian muslim commander Naser Oric in the Geneva region, the Swiss news agency ATS reported.
Arrested at the Thonex-Vallard crossing between Switzerland and France , Oric was handed over to police custody and then to the Federal Office of Justice, ATS said, citing a police spokesman.
According to Serbian radio B-92, the arrest was based on a warrant issued by Belgrade last year.
Serbia accuses 48-year-old Oric, and four other people, of committing war crimes in July 1992 in Zalazje near Sarajevo in which nine people were killed.
Oric led the Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, which was flooded by thousands of Muslim refugees in 1992 and surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces.
When Srebrenica became a UN enclave, Oric and his men continued to carry out raids on nearby villages, angering the Bosnian Serbs.
Finally on July 11, 1995, Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces who executed an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys and threw their bodies into mass graves.
Britain is drafting a UN Security Council resolution to mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre and reflect on the UN\’s failure to prevent Europe\’s worst atrocity since World War II.
In 2006, Oric was sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to two years in prison for not doing enough to prevent crimes committed by his subordinates against Serbs.
Two years later, he was acquitted on all charges on appeal, after becoming one of the few Bosnian Muslims to be tried and convicted by the ICTY.
SOURCE: AFP
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