Serbia probing 2 men on war-crime charges

BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- Serbian prosecutors opened an investigation regarding two Serbs suspected of committing war crimes against Bosnian Muslim civilians in 1992.

Serbian police arrested Goran Savic, 38, on charges he allegedly tortured and killed Bosnian Muslim civilians in two detention camps at the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik in May 1992 at the start of the 1992-95 Bosnian ethnic war, Serbia's RTS radio-television said Friday.

War crimes prosecutors in Belgrade this month completed an inquiry against Sasa Djilerdzic on the same war crimes charges in Zvornik. Savic and Djilerdzic, both of the western Serbian town of Kraljevo, were former members of Serbian forces that took control of the mainly Muslim Zvornik area, on the Drina River bordering Serbia, early in 1992.

The two men are to be put on trial along with six Serbs already tried before a Belgrade court on war crime charges in the Zvornik area, RTS said.

The trial of the six former members of Serbian forces began in November 2005 and it was the first war-crime hearing that the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, in Netherlands, has handed over to the Serbian judiciary.