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Indicted Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect transferred to UN tribunal

Indicted Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect transferred to UN tribunal

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Following his voluntary surrender, Dusan Fustar, a Bosnian Serb who has been indicted for war crimes, was transferred today to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The 47-year old suspect was a shift commander in 1992 at the Keraterm camp, where detainees, held in severely overcrowded conditions with little or no personal hygiene facilities, were fed starvation rations once a day, according to the indictment. Interrogations were allegedly conducted on a daily basis and regularly accompanied by beatings and torture.

The indictment says killings, sexual assault and other forms of physical and psychological abuse were also commonplace at the Keraterm camp. Camp guards and others used "all types of weapons and instruments to beat and otherwise physically abuse the detainees." Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat political and civic leaders, intellectuals, the wealthy and non-Serbs who were considered to be extremists or to have resisted the Bosnian Serbs were especially subjected to beatings, torture and/or murder.

"At a minimum, hundreds of detainees, whose identities are known and unknown, did not survive," the UN court said in a statement today.

Mr. Fustar faces charges of crimes against humanity, including persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds, as well as violations of the laws or customs of war such as outrages upon personal dignity, murder, cruel treatment and torture.

In the coming days, the Tribunal is expected to set a date for the suspect to enter a plea in response to the charges against him.