Serbia arrests five persons suspected of murdering Roma during the Bosnian war

Serbian authorities have arrested five people suspected of committing war crimes during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the first half of the 1990s, APA reports. The Serbian State Prosecutor says the five are responsible for the murder of at least 23 Roma in the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik in July 1992.

The Roma were first held together in a building where their captors tortured them. Some were then shot in front of a cave in the village of Hamzić, while others were murdered with knives, the State Prosecutor reports. Investigators say the captors left three women alive and raped them over the following days.

A sixth person suspected of these murders is currently in prison for other war crimes. All the alleged murderers are said to have left Bosnia in 1993 and returned to Serbia.

The most recent estimates say that as many as 100 000 people perished during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Military operations ended in December 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord. The country then split internally into two strongly autonomous administrative entities, the Croatian-Muslim Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska.