Members of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) have arrested seven people suspected of crimes against humanity in the Sokolac municipality. The SIPA operation was carried out early this morning, and the arrested are in the premises of SIPA for criminal investigation, confirmed SIPA spokesman Luka Miladinovic.
The suspects are charged with planning, organizing and participating in September 1992, as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the Bosniak civilian population, 44 Bosniak civilians from the village of Novoseoci in the Sokolac municipality and the persecution of civilians from the area.
In a coordinated action on the ground, acting on the order of the prosecutor from the Special Department for War Crimes, police officers of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) in the early morning, in the municipality of Sokolac, located, identified and arrested a total of seven suspects. Through international legal mechanisms, the extradition of one of the suspects located in overseas countries will be requested.
The suspects under investigation are charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise and are former senior officials of the Sokolac Crisis Staff, the army and police, as well as the direct perpetrators of the 1992 murder of Bosniak civilians in the village of Novoseoci, Sokolac municipality.
This is a crime committed on 21/22. September 1992, when members of the Army of Republika Srpska carried out an attack on the said village, and the separation of men from women and children. The men were then transported by military trucks to the location of the dump in Ivan Polje, where they were brutally killed by gunfire, and buried at the landfill, while the women and children were expelled and transported to the territory of Sarajevo.
Among the people killed were underage boys, as well as one woman who was killed in an attack on the village. The youngest victim was 14 and the oldest 82 years old.
