Bosnian officer tried for murder

Bosnian Muslim commander Sefer Halilovic went on trial for murder at the UN Yugoslav war crimes tribunal yesterday in the killing of dozens of Croat civilians during the Bosnia war.

Halilovic, 53, is the highest-ranking Muslim army official to be tried for alleged crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. He has been accused of senior responsibility for massacres in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol, Bosnia, in 1993.

A total of 62 people were killed and many of their bodies were dumped in the Neretva river.

In opening arguments, prosecutors showed horrific amateur video footage of slain children and elderly people, allegedly massacred by Halilovic's men.

"The murdered Croat civilians were not combatants, nor were they taking part in military action, nor were they killed as the result of combat" said prosecutor Sureta Chana. "They were either in their beds or were attempting to flee in fear of the fighting."

She named eleven victims in the village of Uzdor, including a 10-year-old boy, who had been shot in the back of the head, and several elderly people who had been fleeing fighting.

In some cases their skulls had been smashed and their bodies were partially naked. "The issue in this case is whether the accused failed to take the reasonable and necessary measures that were his legal obligation as a commander to take" to prevent the murders, Chana said.

"The prosecution will prove at trial that he did not."

Halilovic, who sat quietly watching the hearings, has pleaded innocent to a single count of murder, classified in the tribunal's statute as a violation of the laws of customs of war.

If convicted he could be sentenced to life in prison.

Halilovic surrendered to the court in September 2001. He had been a government minister for refugee issues in the new pro-Western Bosnian cabinet until the court revealed a sealed indictment against him.

In a related development, Croatia and Serbia-Montenegro met in Sarajevo yesterday to discuss the problem of hundreds of thousands of refugees remaining from the 1990s wars during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Fighting between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians left millions displaced, and many never returned from their places of refuge in one of the three neighbouring countries.

The 1992-95 Bosnian war alone claimed 260,000 lives and turned half of the country's prewar population of four million into refugees.

In a November report, a group created by the Norwegian Refugee Council at the request of the United Nations estimated that Bosnia is still home to 320,000 displaced people and Serbia-Montenegro to 250,000.

In Croatia, from where about 200,000 Serbs fled or were expelled during Croatia's 1995 offensive to recapture land seized by Serb rebels, only about 70,000 have returned.

The UNHCR estimates that some 100,000 Bosnian Serbs still live in Serbia-Montenegro.