SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s war crimes court indicted a Bosnian Serb wartime army commander yesterday for the killing, rape and torture of Muslims in eastern Bosnia early in the 1992-95 war. Momir Savic is accused of persecution, murder, imprisonment, rape, torture and other inhuman acts against Bosnian Muslims in and around the eastern town of Visegrad from April to September 1992, the court said in a statement. Savic was a member of a paramilitary unit formed when the Uzice Corps of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) launched its operations in Bosnia, and then became a company commander of the Bosnian Serb army’s Visegrad Brigade. The court said Savic and several other Serb soldiers had taken 10 Muslim civilians from their homes in a Visegrad neighborhood in May 1992, beaten and then executed them. Savic took part in other, similar incidents and once, “when one civilian tried to run away, shot at him... and deprived him of his life,” the indictment said. He is also accused of repeatedly raping a Muslim woman in her house from June to September 1992, threatening her to stop her telling anyone.

PRISTINA (AFP) – NATO-led peacekeepers (KFOR) yesterday began two-day military manoeuvres in the Serb-dominated northern part of Kosovo where locals have strongly opposed Pristina’s unilateral declaration of independence. “During these two days a huge number of armored vehicles and helicopters will be set in movement,” KFOR said in a press release. The maneuvres will be held near lLake Gazivode and one of two main roads connecting Kosovo and Serbia.

Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said yesterday that he expected an international war crimes court would find his country’s former General Ante Gotovina not guilty. Gotovina had appeared before the court in The Hague yesterday accused of overseeing the deliberate and murderous expulsion of more than 200,000 Croatian Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia in a 1995 offensive. “I expect that the defense will refute the allegations and that presumption of his innocence will be confirmed,” Sander told journalists. Gotovina and two other Croatian generals face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity including persecution, murder and plunder during what had been dubbed “Operation Storm.” The opening trial was broadcast live by national television in Croatia, where they still enjoy broad public support. (AFP)

Bosnian Serb police yesterday raided homes of two former bodyguards of the top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic. “Special police units raided the homes of Nebojsa Cavic and Vlatko Lopatic in Pale,” near Sarajevo, a Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry statement said. During Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war the two men were Karadzic’s bodyguards, it said. Police seized computer equipment, CDs and mobile phones. The seized material will be handed over to Bosnia’s State Court for analysis, the ministry said. (AFP)