Bosnian Serb found guilty of war crimes

A former Bosnian Serb general was convicted Wednesday of orchestrating months of deadly shelling and sniping during the siege of Sarajevo in 1994 and 1995 and was sentenced to 33 years in prison.

The siege by troops under Gen. Dragomir Milosevic killed more than 10,000 civilians with a hail of bullets and mortar shells.

“There was no safe place in Sarajevo,” said Presiding Judge Patrick Robinson, reading from the judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. “One could be killed and injured anywhere and any time.”

Judges found Milosevic, no relation to the late Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and inhumane acts by troops of his Sarajevo Romanija Corps unit of the Bosnian Serb army.

Dragomir Milosevic, who surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in December 2004, had pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence.

The siege of Sarajevo is synonymous with the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The world saw television images of sniper fire and shells raining down on the city’s mainly Muslim population from the surrounding hills.

Milosevic, 65, became a corps commander in August 1994. His predecessor, Stanislav Galic, is serving life in prison.

Mirsad Tokaca, the director of Sarajevo’s Research and Documentation Center, welcomed the sentence, saying, “I think it can provide partial satisfaction to the citizens of Sarajevo, if there can be any satisfaction for the victims.”