Sarajevo siege commander sentenced to 33 years jail

THE HAGUE - The U.N. tribunal sentenced a former Bosnian Serb general to 33 years imprisonment on Wednesday for ordering the deadly shelling of Sarajevo and terrorising its civilians during the 1992-1995 Bosnia war.

Judges found Dragomir Milosevic guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity that include responsibility for terror, murder, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians by troops of his Sarajevo Romanija Corps (SRK) unit of the Bosnian Serb Army.

"The evidence presents an horrific tale of the encirclement and entrapment of a city and its bombardment," said Judge Patrick Robinson.

Milosevic became commander of the SRK in August 1994, taking over from Stanislav Galic, a former Bosnian Serb general already sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the siege.

Judge Robinson said it was under Milosevic's command that modified air bombs, highly inaccurate weapons, were first used and he decided on the placement of bomb launchers.

"Each time a modified air bomb was launched the accused was playing with the lives of the citizens of Sarajevo."

Prosecutors had demanded life imprisonment for the 65-year-old.

Sarajevo's plight became synonymous with the Bosnian war. The world saw television images of sniper and shell fire raining down on the city's mainly Muslim population from the steep surrounding hills.

In one infamous attack, 43 people were killed and 75 wounded when a mortar shell hit people queuing for bread by the city market in August 1995.

"The SRK subjected Sarajevo to a prolonged and murderous campaign of terror through shelling and sniping of civilians ... this bloody and criminal campaign continued for 44 months," prosecutors said in their closing arguments.

Milosevic, not related to the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, pleaded not guilty. He surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in December 2004.

Norwegian government-backed research by the Sarajevo-based Investigation-Documentation Centre has said about 14,000 people were killed in the Sarajevo area during the war.

Of these, more than 10,000 -- mostly Muslims but also Croats and Serbs -- were killed in the Muslim-held part of Sarajevo in fighting and shelling and sniper attacks.