Bosnia court quashes myth of Serb ‘hero’ in Srebrenica

SARAJEVO: A Bosnian court on Friday convicted a former ethnic Serb officer of genocide for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of Muslims, overturning a myth that he had heroically refused to join the operation.

Srecko Acimovic, who has long claimed to be one of few Serb soldiers to disobey his superiors during the slaughter in Srebrenica, was handed nine years in prison for in fact participating in the massacre.

Acimovic, 53, "helped commit a joint criminal enterprise... consisting of the partial extermination of a religious and ethnic group. He has thus committed the act of genocide," Judge Stanisa Gluhajic said while delivering the verdict before a Sarajevo court.

Serb troops executed more than 8,000 Muslim men and teenagers in Srebrenica, an eastern enclave of Muslims, during the final year of Bosnia’s devastating inter-communal war. According to the verdict, Acimovic "carried out an order" to secure trucks to transport 818 prisoners gathered in a school gymnasium to the place of their execution, a quarry near the village of Kozluk 70 km north of Srebrenica.