Bosnian Serb cousins convicted by UN tribunal over horrific burnings

The United Nations tribunal set up in the wake of the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s today convicted two Bosnian Serb cousins of war crimes, including the burning alive of scores of Muslim women, children and elderly men, an act the court said ranks among “the worst acts of inhumanity that a person may inflict upon others.”

Milan Lukić was sentenced to life in prison, having been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of murder, extermination, cruel treatment, inhumane acts and war crimes.

He was found responsible for the murders in 1992 of 59 Muslim women, children and elderly men by barricading them in one room of a house in the town of Višegrad, in south-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where a carpet had been treated with an accelerant and an explosive device was exploded, setting the house on fire.

According to evidence presented to the ICTY, victims were shot as they tried to escape the flames through the windows. “These people are killing our mother, our mother-in-law, and our brother’s two children,” said those who had escaped and hid from the attackers. “They didn’t do anything wrong.”

In another fire the defendant was found guilty of, at least 60 Muslims were burned alive at a house in Bikavac, where all exits had been blocked by heavy furniture to prevent people from fleeing.

Mr. Lukić was also found guilty today of killing seven Muslim men at the Varda factory in Višegrad, with evidence showing that he collected them from their workplaces and shot them on the banks of the Drina River in full view of others, including the wife and daughter of one of the victims.

The trial chamber convicted him of beating Muslim detainees at the Uzamnica detention camp between August 1991 and October 1994.

His cousin, Sredoje Lukić, a former police officer in Višegrad, was sentenced by the ICTY to 30 years in prison for his roles in the house fires in Višegrad and Bikavac as well as in the beatings of inmates at Uzamnica.

“In the all-too-long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires must rank high,” said Judge Patrick Robinson, reading out the summary of judgment in The Hague.

“At the close of the 20th century, a century marked by war and bloodshed on a colossal scale, these horrific events stand out for the viciousness of the incendiary attack, for the obvious premeditation and calculation that defined it, for the sheer callousness and brutality of herding, trapping and locking victims in the two houses, thereby rendering them helpless in the ensuing inferno, and for the degree of pain and suffering inflicted on the victims as they were burnt alive.”

The trial of the two cousins, both members of a paramilitary group, began last July, with Milan having been arrested in Argentina in August 2005 after evading justice for seven years. Sredoje surrendered to the Bosnian Serb authorities the following month.

Since its establishment in 1993, the ICTY has indicted 161 people for war crimes. Proceedings against 120 people have been completed, with only two indictees – Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić – on the run.

The so-called “completion strategy” of the ICTY requires it to finish trials of first instance by 2009, and then start downsizing in 2010, and earlier this month, the Security Council extended the term of office of eight permanent judges and 10 ad litem, or temporary, judges until 31 December 2010, or until the completion of the cases to which they are assigned.

In addition, the Council decided, on the request of the President of the ICTY, that the Secretary-General may appoint additional temporary judges to complete existing trials or conduct additional trials.