Bosnian Serb Could Serve Srebrenica Prison Term

The UN Yugoslav war crimes court wants a former Bosnian Serb general who was the first person it convicted of genocide to serve the rest of his prison term in Poland, reports said on September 21. Radislav Krstic, convicted of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica massacre, was handed a 35-year sentence in 2004 and transferred to a British prison. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) wants him to serve the remainder of his term in Poland, a spokesman for the Warsaw regional court, Igor Tuleya, reportedly said. “We received a request via our ministry of justice. The files are being translated. We’ll deal with this within two months,” Tuleya added.
Poland is one of 17 countries that have offered to handle convicts handed down prison terms by the tribunal, which is based in the Dutch capital The Hague. If he is transferred, Krstic would be the first war criminal to serve time in Poland at the behest of the UN tribunal. Krstic’s forces were responsible for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in July 1995 when they overran UN peacekeepers in the supposed “safe area”. It was deemed the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.