SARAJEVO, Jan 22 (Reuters) – Bosnia’s war crimes court on Friday jailed Bosnian Muslim wartime commander Sakib Mahmuljin for 10 years for failing to prevent or punish atrocities against Serb prisoners by foreign Islamists who fought in the 1990s conflict. Hundreds of Islamist fighters, or “mujahideen”, came from North Africa and the Middle East to help the mainly Muslim Bosnian government forces fight separatist Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats during the war, in which 100,000 people died. In its verdict, the court said it determined that foreign Islamists murdered 53 Serb prisoners of war from July to October 1995, towards the end of the war. The court was set up in 2005 to ease the burden of cases taken by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. After the war ended, foreign Islamists were ordered to leave Bosnia under U.S. pressure and most did, including those who married local women but then had their citizenship revoked.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 22, 2021 13:52 UTC