Bosnian Serb jailed for war crimes

Vasiljevic was convicted of killing five men

The International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague has sentenced a Bosnian Serb, Mitar Vasiljevic, to 20 years in jail for crimes against humanity.

Vasiljevic, a former paramilitary recruit in the Bosnian town of Visegrad, was convicted of killing five Muslims.

The chamber is convinced that the five Muslim men were killed... solely for the reason of their ethnicity

Court ruling

But judges dismissed a charge that he was directly involved in burning alive Muslim women, children and elderly men on two separate occasions.

They said the prosecution had failed to disprove Vasiljevic's alibi that he was in hospital with a broken leg at the time of that incident.

He was found guilty of taking part in the summary execution of five Muslim men on the banks of the Drina river on 7 June 1992.

The men, who pleaded for their lives, were all shot in the back, according to the tribunal ruling.

White Eagles

At the start of his trial last year, Vasiljevic pleaded not guilty to all charges, on the grounds that he was in hospital.

The prosecution tried to show that he lied about his injuries and called a medical expert who testified that an X-ray image of a broken leg with the name Mitar Vasiljevic written in the margin, was not genuine.

Vasiljevic belonged to the White Eagles, a paramilitary group that worked with Bosnian Serb police and army units.

It operated in Visegrad, a town on the banks of the Drina river in south-western Bosnia, where ethnic tensions erupted into violence in the early 1990s.

Indicted with Vasiljevic for the crimes, including the burning of Muslims, were Milan Lukic, who allegedly formed the "White Eagles", and Sredoje Lukic, who prosecutors said was another member of the group.

Both are still at large.