Bosnian Muslim commander charged
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Bosnian Serb leaders filed criminal charges Thursday against a wartime Muslim commander who allegedly appears in a video ordering the destruction of Serb homes in 1995 in western Bosnia in.
The Bosnian Serb ministate's President Dragan Cavic and Prime Minister Milorad Dodik jointly pressed criminal charges against Atif Dudakovic and submitted them to prosecutors in their half of the country, the state of Bosnia and in neighboring Croatia, the men said in a statement.
Footage -- first aired by Belgrade-based B92 television, then by Serbia's state television -- purportedly shows Bosnian Muslim and Croatian soldiers harassing and attacking Serb refugees fleeing a Croatian military offensive launched in August 1995 to retake contested territories from Serb rebels.
A man, who accused of being retired Bosnian Army Gen. Dudakovic, can be seen in the video ordering the destruction of Serb homes. Dudakovic said the footage was fabricated and accused Serbian TV stations of attributing false statements to him.
More than 200,000 Serbs fled during the offensive -- the biggest single exodus in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Many of them crossed through parts of western Bosnia in search of safety, and more than a hundred were killed.
The footage outraged many Serbs, who often accuse the U.N. tribunal of bias against them and unwilling to investigate cases in which Serbs were victims.
"I can say with full moral responsibility that members of the Fifth Corps did not commit crimes. There may have been individual cases, but only individual," Dudakovic told Bosnian media.
Bosnian President Sulejman Tihic on Wednesday rejected accusations that a wartime Muslim commander committed atrocities against Serbs.
Bosnia's state prosecutors office said it was examining the tape.
The peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war left the country divided into a Bosnian Serb ministate and a Muslim Croat Federation.
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