The Bosnian capital Sarajevo today marks 33 years since the beginning of its siege, the longest in the history of a city, BGNES reported.
Sarajevo was under total siege for 1,423 days. During that time, Serbian forces killed over 11,000 people, and 350,000 people were subjected to daily terror, both by the troops of the former Yugoslav Army and by Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Generals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic.
All types of weapons from the surrounding hills of Sarajevo were used against the city's residents, the news portal "Patria" recalls. According to the Center for Research and Documentation, over 97,000 people died in Sarajevo alone. According to the Demographic Office of the Hague Prosecutor's Office, their number is 105,000 people.
The war crimes tribunal in The Hague has convicted ten members of the Army of Republika Srpska for crimes committed in the Sarajevo area.
Former Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic was also indicted by the Hague Tribunal for crimes committed in Sarajevo, but he died during his trial in March 2006.
Biljana Plavšić, the former president of Republika Srpska, pleaded guilty to participating, among other things, in the crimes in Sarajevo, and was subsequently sentenced to 11 years in prison by the Hague Tribunal.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentenced Stanislav Galić, former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanian Army Corps, to life in prison for terrorizing the citizens of Sarajevo. Dragomir Milošević, Galić's successor as head of the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
For terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo with sniper and artillery attacks, among other things, former RS president and VRS military leader Radovan Karadzic was sentenced to life imprisonment.
General Ratko Mladic also received a life sentence. The Hague tribunal revealed that the Sarajevo-Romanian Corps deliberately attacked civilians.
In the summer of 1995, the forces of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic committed the greatest crime since World War II in Srebrenica and Gorazde. There, genocide was committed against tens of thousands of people. I BGNES
