Man Convicted in Videotaped Killings

An ethnic Serb seen killing Muslims in a video that was nationally televised was convicted of war crimes Thursday and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Serbian paramilitary member Slobodan Davidovic “actively participated in inhuman treatment, humiliation and liquidation” of six young Muslim men from Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, Zagreb district Judge Miroslav Sovanj said in his ruling.

Davidovic was seen in the video -- shown by prosecutors at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and then broadcast across the former Yugoslavia -- helping kill six young Bosnian Muslims whose hands were tied behind their backs.

Four were shot in the back. Two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn, where they too were killed.

Serbian troops overran the enclave of Srebrenica and killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Europe’s worst massacre since World War II.

Davidovic, 52, also was convicted of torturing a Croat prisoner of war during the 1991 Serb-Croat war. He was arrested in eastern Croatia in June, soon after the footage was shown.

Five others seen in the video were arrested in Serbia and are on trial there. Prosecutors say the men were members of a Serbian paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions that took part in the killings at Srebrenica.