THE HAGUE, Netherlands, June 12 (UPI) -- A Bosnian Serb military police sub-commander accused of war crimes has been brought before the U.N. criminal tribunal after 10 years on the run.
Dragan Zelenovic has been accused of a range of war crimes, including gang rape and torture of women, in the former Yugoslavian territories that now comprise Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the early 1990s.
Zelenovic was initially arrested in August 2005 by Russian security forces, but was expelled from the territory without being handed over to the tribunal. He was later arrested by Bosnian authorities, who transferred him over the weekend from the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo to the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Zelenovic was indicted along with several other Bosnian Serbs in June 1996 after allegedly playing a leadership role in crimes committed in the town of Foca, in southeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, in April 1992.
Following the Serbian takeover of the town, military police, accompanied by local and other soldiers, started arresting Muslim and Croat residents. Muslim women, children and the elderly were detained in houses, apartments and motels in Foca and in surrounding villages, and many were subjected to humiliating and degrading conditions, brutal beatings and sexual assault, including rape, the indictment said.
Several woman were detained in houses and apartments used as brothels, operated by groups of mostly paramilitary soldiers, the indictment also said.
No date has yet been set for Zelenovic's initial appearance before the tribunal.
