Bosnian Serb commander jailed for killing 144 Muslims

SARAJEVO, Nov 3 (Reuters) Bosnia's war crimes court issued its longest jail sentence today, sending a Serb wartime military commander to prison for 26 years for the murder of 144 Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

The court convicted Marko Samardzija, 70, of ordering a systematic attack on civilians in the northwestern Kljuc region on July 10, 1992, in which at least 144 Muslim men were killed, judge Zorica Gogala said.

The court also sentenced another Serb, Nikola Kovacevic, to 12 years in prison for war crimes against Muslims and Croats in the neighbouring Sanski Most region.

Company commander Samardzija ordered all Muslims from the Brkici village to leave their homes and then separated men from women and children, the prosecution said during the trial.

Men over 18 and under 60 were locked up in a school and were killed in groups of five to ten. Remaining detainees were beaten and transported in buses to another location where they too were executed, the prosecution added.

The bodies were hauled up by an excavator into a truck and buried in several mass graves. Forensic experts exhumed 239 bodies of Muslims from four mass graves in 1996.

Kovacevic was convicted for the beatings and inhumane transportation of civilians to the notorious Manjaca detention camp. In one casem, 19 out of 60 detainees aboard a packed truck suffocated.

Bosnia's war crimes court was established in 2005 to take over smaller cases from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). About a dozen more people, mostly Bosnian Serbs, are on trial or are waiting to be tried.

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