War Criminal Transferred to UK Prison

Momcilo Krajisnik, one of the highest ranking war-time members of the Bosnian Serb leadership, was transferred yesterday to the UK to serve his 20-year sentence for crimes committed against non-Serb civilians during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Krajisnik was sentenced on 17 March 2009 by the Appellate Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, which found him guilty of the forcible transfer and persecution of Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians, including women, children and elderly people. These crimes were committed between April and December 1992 in the municipalities of Zvornik, Banja Luka, Sanski Most, Sokolac, Prnjavor, Bratunac, Bijeljina, Bosanska Krupa and Trnovo.

During and immediately after the war, Krajisnik held a variety of senior positions in the Bosnian Serb leadership. He was the president of the Bosnian Serb Assembly, a member of the Main Board of the Serbian Democratic Party, and a member of the National Security Council and the Bosnian Presidency.

He was found to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise with the objective of ethnically recomposing territories under the control of Bosnian Serbs by drastically reducing the proportion of non-Serbs through the commission of various crimes.

Radovan Karadzic and other Bosnian-Serb leaders are accused accomplices in this criminal enterprise.

Since its inception 16 years ago, the ICTY has indicted 161 people for serious violations of humanitarian law, committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 2001.

Proceedings against 120 indictees have been concluded. Two others remain at large: Ratko Mladic, indicted for crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Goran Hadzic, indicted for crimes in Croatia.