AP News, July 20th, 2007
Two Bosnian Serb cousins charged with murdering scores of Muslim men, women and children while in the same notorious paramilitary group will stand trial together at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, the U.N. court said Friday.
Milan Lukic led a unit called the "White Eagles" or "Avengers" in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad during the country's 1992-95 war and his cousin Sredoje Lukic was a member, prosecutors allege.
The cousins are charged with the murder of about 70 Muslim men, women and children by barricading them into a house, torching it and then spraying automatic rifle fire at anyone trying to escape.
In a similar incident in the nearby village of Bikavac, prosecutors say they again locked 70 Muslims into a house and killed them by "throwing in several explosive devices."
Milan Lukic is separately charged with murdering groups of Muslim men on the banks of the Drina River, which flows through Visegrad and swept away the bodies.
Milan Lukic was arrested in 2005 in Argentina. The cousins, who have both pleaded not guilty to all charges, face sentences of up to life imprisonment if convicted.
An alleged accomplice, Mitar Vasiljevic, was convicted by the tribunal in 2004 and sentenced to 15 years.
The tribunal had planned to send both Lukic cousins to Bosnia, where they would have faced separate trials, as a way of speeding up proceedings at The Hague-based court, which is under pressure to finish all trials and appeals by 2010.
Milan Lukic had successfully appealed against having his case transferred and judges Friday reversed the decision for Sredoje Lukic, saying much of the evidence overlaps and making witnesses testify twice would be unfair.
The atrocities in Visegrad were among the worst of the Bosnian war, as Serbs embarked on a killing spree aimed at wiping out all of town's Muslims.
According to a summary of the prosecution allegations, "a large number of unarmed Muslim civilians from Visegrad were killed because of their ethnicity. Many of the Muslim men, women and children who were killed around the town and on the historic Ottoman bridge crossing the River Drina were dumped into the river."
Muslim homes were systematically looted and both of Visegrad's mosques were destroyed.
The tribunal has referred eight cases involving 13 suspects to courts in the former Yugoslavia, mostly to Bosnia. No more cases are expected to be transferred.
