Bosnian Serb gets 20 years for war crimes

SARAJEVO, May 27 (Reuters) Bosnia's war crimes court has sentenced Bosnian Serb former officer Dragoje Paunovic to 20 years in prison for crimes against humanity during the Balkan country's 1992-95 war.

The court said Paunovic ''ordered and carried out persecution against the Muslim civilian population from the Rogatica area on political, national, ethnic, cultural and religious grounds by committing murders and other inhumane acts.'' The indictment said that on August 15, 1992, while leading a small group from the Rogatica battalion based in eastern Bosnia, Paunovic ordered his soldiers to capture 27 civilians and use them as human shields on a frontline.

Later that day he ordered soldiers to shoot the captives, also taking up a gun himself. Only three people survived.

Bosnia's war crimes chamber was established in 2005 to alleviate some of the workload of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It will increasingly take over low- and mid-level cases as the Hague court winds down by 2010.

Reuters SHR RN0429