Three ex-fighters pleaded not guilty at a hearing before the Bosnian state court to war crimes committed in the north-western Prijedor municipality in 1992.
Defendants Dragomir Soldar, Velemir Djuric and Zoran Babic, all members of the Bosnian Serb army or police force, pleaded not guilty on Monday to crimes against humanity during the 1990s conflict.
According to the indictment, from late April 1992 through September 1992, as part of a widespread and systematic Bosnian Serb army and police attack on the non-Serb civilian population in Prijedor, the three men perpetrated, aided and abetted persecution on political, ethnic, cultural and religious grounds.
They are charged with killings and other inhumane acts committed with the intention of causing great suffering or serious bodily injury.
The prosecution alleges that Djuric, Soldar and Babic, along with several other people, took Bosniak men from their houses in Carakovo, a village near Prijedor, on July 23, 1992, and shot them in front of the local mosque.
“Ten were killed, while two men managed to survive the shooting,” the state prosecutor’s office said.
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.