Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The U.N. war crimes tribunal said Friday it will try Slobodan Milosevic for genocide in Bosnia, linking him for the first time in court to the murder of thousands of non-Serbs and the displacement of a quarter-million people.
Judge Richard May approved the third indictment against the former Yugoslav president, confirming that years of investigation had produced enough evidence to put him on trial for mankind’s worst crime.
Prosecutors charged the 60-year-old defendant with criminal responsibility for the "widespread killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats" during the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war.
The latest indictment lists dozens of execution sites, detention facilities and the locations of more than 8,600 murders across Bosnia.
It charges Milosevic with 29 counts, including genocide, complicity to commit genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws or customs of war — every crime in the tribunal’s statute.
Milosevic, extradited to U.N. custody on June 28, now faces a total of 66 charges of war crimes spanning nearly a decade of conflict in the Balkans. He had been accused of 32 counts of war crimes in Croatia and five in Kosovo, but the Bosnia indictment is the first to include genocide.
He could face life imprisonment if found guilty of any charge.
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