The war crimes tribunal prosecuting members associated with the former Yugoslavia sentenced a former Bosnian Serb general to a 33 year prison term. The U.N. tribunal transmitted the sentence to Dragomir Milosevic, no relation to Slobodan Milosevic, for atrocities committed in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
Milosevic, 65, oversaw the killing of more than 10,000 people in the Muslim enclaves of Sarajevo using shelling and sniper attacks against civilians. “The evidence discloses an horrific tale of the encirclement and entrapment of a city,” the judge in the trial said. “There was no safe place in Sarajevo, one could be killed or injured anywhere and anytime.”
The tribunal found Milosevic guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Milosevic was a commander of the Sajajevo Romanija Corps unit of the Bosnian Serb Army. The unit employed snipers and mortar attacks to deliberately target civilians, the judge said. In one instance, mortars killed nearly 80 civilians queuing for bread, and in another, a sniper killed a woman's baby after a bullet went through her stomach, striking the infant in the head.
Milosevic surrendered to the United Nations in 2004. This is one of the toughest sentences the tribunal handed down since its inception in 1993.
