Three ex-Officers Indicted for Role in Srebrenica Genocide

Three Bosnian Serb former police commanders were charged with genocide Thursday for their role in the slaughter some 8,000 Muslims men and boys at Srebrenica as the Balkan wars drew to a close in 1995.

The commanders "participated in the planning and carrying out of the Srebrenica genocide by providing man-power and technical means from the police forces," Bosnian prosecutor Boris Grubesic said in a statement.

Dragomir Vasic, Danilo Zoljic and Radomir Panic were at the time commanders of local police in the region of Zvornik, which is near Srebrenica.

The men were not arrested, but their freedom of movement has been limited by court order, a spokesman for Grubesic told Agence France-Presse.

In July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Ratko Mladic brushed aside lightly-armed U.N. peacekeepers from the Netherlands in a "safe area" near Srebrenica where thousands of Muslims from surrounding villages had gathered for protection.

What followed was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II with almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys murdered and their bodies dumped in mass graves.

Meanwhile, as part of another case, a retired Bosnian Serb police general Goran Saric had his conviction for war crimes overturned on appeal.

Saric was sentenced last year to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of his role in expulsions, illegal detentions and executions of Muslim civilians in a Sarajevo suburb at the beginning of the 1992-95 war that broke out as former Yugoslavia disintegrated.

But on Thursday, judge Azra Miletic said the prosecution had failed to prove that Saric ordered the arrests and executions of the civilians. 

The general has been separately indicted for alleged participation in the Srebrenica genocide, but that case is still underway.