Panel Opens 1st Bosnia War Crimes Case

A Bosnian Serb accused of torturing and killing Muslims at a death camp three years ago appeared before a U.N. tribunal Wednesday as the first defendant to face an international war crimes hearing since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II.

Dusan Tadic, the only one of 22 Serbs indicted for crimes against humanity who is now in legal custody, pleaded not guilty during a pretrial hearing to a long list of charges including the murder, rape and beating of Muslim and Croat neighbors during the 1992 Serbian campaign of “ethnic cleansing” to drive non-Serbs from Bosnia’s Prijedor region.

Tadic’s trial is expected to begin in June.

The tribunal’s decision to press ahead with its first war crimes trial and to explore prosecution of the Bosnian Serb leadership has been applauded by the United States and Bosnia’s Muslim-led government.

But Russia has criticized the action for jeopardizing efforts to reach a peace settlement, while France and Britain have expressed fears it could provoke Serbian reprisals against their U.N. troops in Bosnia.

A fragile four-month cease-fire will end Monday, though it has existed only on paper for the last month and fighting has escalated in recent days. Officials of the Contact Group--the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia--will meet in Paris on Friday to try to negotiate an extension of the truce.

Tadic is accused of participating in a roundup of more than 3,000 Muslims and Croats forced from their homes in May, 1992. The prisoners included many of Prijedor’s leading Muslim and Croat intellectuals, business people and politicians.

Tadic, a 39-year-old cafe owner, was accused of murdering 13 people and participating in many other killings. He also was charged with beating many victims and forcing some to drink motor oil or to bite off the testicles of other prisoners.