Bosnia’s state police made arrests on Friday, taking seven former members of the Bosnian Serb wartime army into custody. These individuals are suspected of participating in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where approximately 8,000 Bosnian Muslims lost their lives—an event recognized as genocide by two international courts.
The arrests occurred near the eastern town of Zvornik, with the State Information and Protection Agency (SIPA) stating that the suspects are under investigation for their alleged involvement in genocide. The charges include individual and command responsibility and assistance related to criminal acts.
In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces, led by General Ratko Mladic, seized control of the eastern town of Srebrenica. Designated a United Nations “safe haven” for around 40,000 civilians, the town witnessed the killing of approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys, who were separated from the women in the following days.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the arrested suspects were former commanders and members of the Bosnian Serb army’s Zvornik brigade. They are believed to have played a role in the shooting and killing of about 800 Muslim victims at the Orahovac site after the fall of the eastern enclave. Although many remains have been discovered in mass graves across eastern Bosnia, a significant number remain unaccounted for.
General Ratko Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2017 for his role in the Srebrenica genocide, considered Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II. Despite this, the Bosnian Serb political leadership denies the characterization of the crime as genocide and downplays the severity of Serb offenses during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.
The recent arrests prompted Serb war veterans from Zvornik to threaten protests and road blockades, asserting that the Serb army had protected “their own ethnic kin and fought for freedom” during the war.
Ethnic cleansing campaigns in Bosnia resulted in approximately 100,000 deaths, and about two million people were displaced from their homes, as reported by war crimes researchers and the U.N. refugee agency in the “Bosnian Book of the Dead.” The suspects are expected to be transferred to the prosecutors’ custody, according to SIPA.
