War crimes
July 20, 2009
The atrocities committed by Milan and Sredoje Lukic included twice locking scores of Muslims in houses and torching the buildings. Judges at the UN court called the murders "callous" and "vicious."
Milan, who received the life sentence, was found by the court to have been the ringleader in both incidents, with Sredoje found to have assisted in one of the burnings. Milan was also convicted of murdering 12 other Muslims.
The burnings claimed the lives of around 140 people, including women and children.
Presiding judge Patrick Robinson said the murders exemplified "the worst acts of inhumanity that one person may inflict on others."
The two had been accused by prosecutors of partaking in "one of the most notorious campaigns of ethnic cleansing" as members of the "White Eagles" paramilitary group in the southeastern Bosnian town of Visegrad. Prosecutors had called for life sentences for the pair.
The cousins' defense attorneys had argued for an acquittal based on a lack of evidence, citing inconsistencies in the accounts of a handful of survivors of the horrific attacks.
The brutality of crimes in Visegrad, a small town on the banks of the River Drina, stood out even amid the atrocities that punctuated the war raging in Bosnia at that time.
The Bosnian War began as a regional conflict involving Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia, but was internationalized when NATO became involved towards the war's close. The inter-ethnic conflict claimed at least 100,000 lives.
dfm/AFP/AP
Editor: Susan Houlton