German Court Sentences Bosnian Serb for War Crimes

MUNICH, Germany — A Bosnian Serb was convicted Friday of being an accessory to the murder of Muslims in his homeland and sentenced to five years in prison.

Novislav Djajic, 34, who was a member of a Bosnian Serb military unit, was tried in Munich, where he has been living since 1993. The three-month proceeding was Germany’s first war crimes trial under international auspices since the Nuremberg trials in 1945.

Prosecutors had sought a nine-year sentence for Djajic, who was charged with taking part in the massacre of 14 Muslims in his hometown of Trnovace, Bosnia-Herzegovina, on June 22, 1992.

The sole survivor, a Muslim man who claimed that he and Djajic were once friends, testified that he was among the group of men whom Djajic’s unit forced onto a bridge railing to be killed.

Esad Mujanovic, 32, said he escaped the massacre by diving into the Drina River. His stepfather and brother were among those killed.

Djajic admitted that he witnessed the killings by the Bosnian Serb soldiers but said he did not take part.

The Bavarian state supreme court convicted Djajic on 14 counts of being an accessory to murder and on one of attempted murder.

He was acquitted of being an accessory to genocide because, the court said, there was no evidence that he was acting as part of a wider plan by Serbian leaders to kill Bosnia’s Muslims.

Another Bosnian Serb, 50-year-old Nikola Jorgic, went on trial in February in Duesseldorf, Germany, on charges of genocide and other war crimes in Bosnia.

Djajic and Jorgic are among four war crimes suspects arrested in Germany so far. The fourth is still being investigated.

The first, Dusan Tadic, was convicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on May 7. He is to be sentenced July 1.

The international court, citing its large caseload, has allowed countries that arrest war crimes suspects to try them.