Belgrade--Serbian police on Wednesday detained seven people suspected of taking part in the 1995 Bosnian Srebrenica massacre, in the first arrests by Serbian authorities over mass killings during the atrocity.
The seven, identified only by initials, were said to be members of a Bosnian Serb special wartime police unit.
Around 8,000 Muslim and boys were killed and their bodies dumped in mass graves during the Srebrenica massacre, considered the worst on European soil since World War II.
The suspects were alleged to have "committed war crimes against the civilian population", in particular at the Kravica warehouse outside Srebrenica where more than 1,000 Muslims were murdered in July 1995, the prosecutor said in a statement.
The prosecution was also searching for several more people believed to be in neighbouring countries, the statement said.
"This is the first case in which our office is dealing with mass killings that were directly part of the Srebrenica massacre," war crime prosecutor's spokesman Bruno Vekaric said.
Previous prosecutions in connection with mass killings at Srebrenica have all been mounted by either the Bosnian authorities or the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY.(
Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are currently on trial before the ICTY for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, some related to Srebrenica.
Bosnia's war crime prosecutor hailed the arrests as the result of "cooperation between the two countries' prosecutors, exchange of information and evidence on suspects living in Serbia".
The seven arrested were allegedly members of the Bosnian Serb "Jahorina" special police unit that took part in the killing of more than 1,000 civilians and war prisoners at Kravica in a single day, on July 13, 1995.
AFP
