Bosnian town mayor charged with war crimes

The Bosnian prosecutor's office on Wednesday said it had charged a Bosnian Serb mayor with war crimes committed during the 1990s war.

Miroslav Kraljevic, 49, who led a Bosnian Serb special police unit in the eastern town of Vlasenica during the 1992-1995 war, was indicted with three others, notably over the murder and disappearance of at least 22 Bosnian Muslims.

They are also accused of imprisoning several dozen people who suffered torture and persecution in 1992 and 1993, the prosecutor's statement said.

"In spring 1993, almost all the Muslim population from this region was expelled," it said.

Kraljevic went on to become mayor of Vlasenica after serving as an MP in the Serb-run Republika Srpska as a member of the SNSD, the party of Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik.

In 2003 he was fined 4,000 marks (some 2,000 euros, $2,300) for the 2010 kidnapping of an MP who had refused to switch sides in a municipal council.

Hi sister Visnja Acimovic, who lives in Serbia, was indicted by Bosnia's prosecutor for participation in the 1992 execution of 37 Muslims in Vlasenica, most of whom were 15 to 20 years old. She denied the accusations and refused extradition to Bosnia.

Around 2,600 of Vlasenica's Muslim population of almost 19,000 were killed during the war, victims' associations say.

Another 500 people are still unaccounted for, Bosnia's Missing Persons Institute says.

Bosnia's interethnic war among Muslims, Serbs and Croats, claimed 100,000 lives.

© 2017 AFP