Serbian video death squad jailed

Four Serb paramilitaries who were filmed killing Bosnian Muslims in 1995 have been convicted of war crimes.

It was the first court ruling in Serbia related to the organised killings of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

The video reveals members of a prominent Serbian paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions taking Bosnian Muslims from a truck with their hands tied and lining them up on a hillside before spraying them with machine gun fire.

Four of the six victims in the video were shot in the back, while two others were forced to carry the bodies into a barn where they were then killed.

The unit's commander, Slobodan Medic, and a fellow member were each sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the only defendant who admitted to shooting the victims, Pero Petrasevic, was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Another Scorpions member, accused as an accomplice, was sentenced to five years in jail, while a fifth was cleared.

Despite the sentences some relatives of the victims were not pleased with the result.

"I am not satisfied with the verdict, and I will never be satisfied, they brought the army to kill children and then, one was acquitted and the other one is sentenced only to five years. There is no other place where you can kill somebody without being punished for it," said Alispajic Azmira.

The verdict followed a decision by the UN's highest court, the Netherlands-based International Court of Justice, made earlier in the year that cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide.

The footage, widely broadcast in Serbia as well as in Bosnia, shocked some Serbians who were in denial about the wartime atrocities committed by the Serb forces.

Trials of Serbs in Serbia have only become possible since President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in custody in the Hague last year, was removed from power in 2000.

The Srebrenica case has been seen as a key test of the ability of Serbia's judiciary to deal with wartime atrocities.

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