A court sentenced four former policemen to a total of 79 years in prison for killing more than 150 civilians on the Koricanske Stijene cliffs in central Bosnia.
The Bosnian state court’s appeals chamber jailed Zoran Babic for 22 years, Milorad Skrbic and Dusan Jankovic for 21 years each, and Zeljko Stojnic for 15 years.
The chamber’s chairman Mirko Bozovic said the court had determined that former police officers Babic, Skrbic and Stojnic participated in the shooting of the civilians at the Koricanske Stijene cliffs on Mount Vlasic in 1992.
He said that Jankovic, former commander of the Prijedor police station where the others were based, “concurred with the crime by failing to prevent the murders”.
The court ruled that Babic, Skrbic and Stojnic were involved in escorting a convoy of non-Serb prisoners from Prijedor on August 21, 1992.
More than 150 men were separated from the convoy on Mount Vlasic and then shot at the cliffs.
Jankovic’s sentence was reduced on appeal by six years because he was found not to have ordered the killings, and Skrbic’s by one year due to his youth at the time when the murders took place.
Babic was not present for the verdict and an order was given for his immediate arrest.
Timeline of events in the case against 13 former Serb fighters charged with committing war crimes in the villages of Cuska, Zahac, Ljubenic and Pavlac in Kosovo in 1999.