SARAJEVO: Bosnian authorities on Friday arrested seven former members of the country’s Serb police force who are suspected of killing Muslim civilians, including women and children, during the 1990s war, prosecutors said.
The former policemen are alleged to have been linked to the murder of 22 people, including seven children and eight women, the prosecutors office said in a statement.
Among the suspects was an individual "who directly executed the victims", the statement said, adding that the arrests were carried out across several towns in Bosnia. The murders occurred in September 1992 in the village of Balatun, near the northeastern town of Bijeljina after the police rounded up 22 Muslim civilians from their homes.
The arrests come just days after police apprehended nine former members of the Bosnian Serb military who are suspected of killing several Muslims and Croats and illegally detaining hundreds of others during the war. Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war between its Croat, Muslim and Serb populations claimed some 100,000 lives. Most of the victims were Muslims.