TWO generals from opposite sides of the Bosnian war, a Muslim and a Serb, surrendered to the United Nations war crimes tribunal yesterday to answer charges related to atrocities committed during the 1992-95 conflict.

The tribunal in The Hague took custody of General Rasim Delic, formerly the most senior commander of the Bosnian Army, whose fighters are alleged to have murdered, beheaded, tortured and raped Bosnian Croat civilian prisoners.

Hours later General Radivoje Miletic handed himself in to the tribunal authorities for trial on charges related to the deaths of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians in the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.

They joined more than 50 other suspects at the detention unit outside The Hague, including Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav President.

General Delic was given a hero’s send-off yesterday from Sarajevo airport. Members of his family, Adnan Terzic, the Prime Minister of Bosnia, and about 300 Bosnian Army war veterans turned out for the 5am flight. “Don’t worry. Justice will win,” General Delic, 56, told the crowd.

General Delic is accused of bearing command responsibility for the actions of foreign Islamic fighters under his command. In particular, he is charged in connection with the actions of the El Mujahed unit of the Bosnian Army, which operated in central Bosnia and ran the infamous Kamenica prison camp.

The indictment alleges that the El Mujahed unit carried out a number of crimes including the murder of some 60 Bosnian Serb soldiers, the torture of inmates at the Kamenica camp and the rape of three women.

On one occasion, in July 1995, members of the unit are alleged to have decapitated one Bosnian Serb prisoner and made all the other prisoners kiss the severed head before it was placed on a hook of the wall in the room where the inmates were held.

General Delic is also accused of failing to punish Mujahidin fighters alleged to have murdered dozens of captured Bosnian Croat civilians and soldiers near Travnik in 1993. General Delic has always defended his role during the war.

More than 150,000 people died and about two million were made homeless in the Bosnia war, Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the end of the Second World War.

Hundreds of Islamic fighters came to Bosnia to support the mainly Muslim government forces during the war. Bosnian government officials have defended the use of foreign fighters, arguing that government forces were suffering under the Western-imposed arms embargo and were facing annihilation from Bosnian Serb forces.

Those at the top of The Hague’s most-wanted list, the former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, both charged with genocide, are on the run. General Miletic was an army staff member at Mladic’s HQ in charge of military training.

The tribunal confirmed jail terms of between five and twenty-five years for Bosnian Serbs convicted of bestial assaults at the notorious Omarska camp. Miroslav Kvocka and Dragoljub Prcac, deputy commanders at the camp, where civilians were held, received terms of seven and five years respectively. Zoran Zigic and Mlado Radic were jailed for 25 and for 20 years for perpetrating torture and inhuman treatment there.

THE CONFLICT

• The 1992-95 conflict was between Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs — part of the break-up of Yugoslavia

• More than 250,000 people died

• In 1995 more than 7,000 Muslim men were massacred in Srebrenica

• Nato became involved after the Dayton agreement of December 1995

• Of more than 120 people publicly indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia since 1993, 17 remain at large

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