Serbia prosecutors charge 8 in Srebrenica massacre

Serbia’s war crimes prosecutors brought charges Thursday against eight suspects in the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica — Europe’s worst carnage since World War II, when some 8,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb troops.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the men — all former members of the Bosnian Serb special police — were charged with taking part in the brutal killing of some 1,300 people at a warehouse in the village of Kravica, on the outskirts of Srebrenica. The victims were crammed into the warehouse and then killed with grenades and machine guns in a rampage that lasted all night. In the morning, Serb police asked the survivors to come out and then killed them, too.

Those charged on Thursday include special police unit commander Nedeljko Milidragovic, also known as Nedjo the Butcher, who gave the order for the killings, prosecutors said. The other suspects were members of his unit.

Chief war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told the Associated Press that “this indictment shows Serbia’s position toward the biggest war crime committed in Europe after World War II.”

“No victim or war criminal will be forgotten,” Vukcevic said.

Bosnian Serbs overran Srebrenica in July 1995 and killed most of the town’s men and boys over several days, burying their remains in several mass graves around the town. Two U.N. courts have called the Srebrenica massacre genocide.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and the army commander Ratko Mladic are on trial for genocide at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for Srebrenica and other atrocities of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war.

Serbia backed Bosnian Serbs during the conflict, but has pledged to deal with its wartime past as the country seeks EU membership.

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This story corrects that the charges were brought on Thursday not on Wednesday.

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