BELGRADE (AFP) - Serbian prosecutors have indicted seven people suspected of committing war crimes against Muslim civilians at the start of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, the Beta news agency reported yesterday. The seven suspects — all in detention in Serbia — have been indicted for the “murder of at least 19 Muslim civilians and expulsion of 1,822 civilians” to Hungary from the area around the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, the agency said. The so-called “Zvornik case” is the first transferred to Serbia’s judiciary by Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in June 2004.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has lifted a travel warning against visiting southern Turkey after a Turkish court charged a suspected Al Qaeda militant with a bomb plot that would have targeted Israeli tourists, officials said yesterday. Israel had diverted a number of cruise ships from Turkey over the past week and told its citizens to avoid Turkey’s popular southern coast, citing “concrete and grave terror threats” against them.

Serbia’s finance minister criticized the decision to drop charges against former president Slobodan Milosevic’s son, calling it a shameful blow to Serbia’s pro-democracy forces, according to comments published yesterday. Mladjan Dinkic told the Blic daily that he and his G17 Plus party would raise the issue with Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, and would demand the state prosecutor’s resignation if media reports that he intervened in the case proved true. (AP)

An outbreak of swine fever in Romania prompted the slaughter of dozens of pigs and the closure of several pig markets in Transylvania, authorities said yesterday. Since the outbreak started at the beginning of August in the town of Thiochis, dozens of pigs have fallen ill with the virus. Hoping to prevent the disease from spreading, authorities have slaughtered dozens of pigs and burned their carcasses. A quarantine also was imposed, with a ban on pigs being taken in or out of the Transylvanian region. (AP)

A military court has sentenced a Turkish conscientious objector to a record four-year prison term for disobedience after he refused twice to wear his military uniform, his lawyer said yesterday. Mehmet Tarhan, who is gay, was sentenced by a military court in the eastern city of Sivas on Wednesday, lawyer Suna Coskun said in a news conference in Ankara. (AP)