Atif Dudakovic, former commander of the Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Army, was arrested on suspicion of war crimes against Serbs and Bosniaks in 1994 and 1995.
Former general Atif Dudakovic, along with 11 other officers and soldiers of the Bosnian Army’s Fifth Corps, was arrested on Friday on suspicion of having committed war crimes against Serbs and Bosniaks in 1994 and 1995.
The alleged war crimes involve several hundred casualties, including civilians and captured Serb soldiers from Bosnia’s Western Krajina municipalities in 1995, as well as crimes against Bosniak civilians from the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, a self-proclaimed Bosniak-led wartime breakaway statelet, in 1994.
Media reports said the arrest followed an investigation into Dudakovic that had been conducted for 12 years.
In 2009, media in Bosnia and Serbia broadcast a videotape that apparently showed Dudakovic giving an order of “fire” or “burn it all”, referring to a Serbian village in a military operation in 1994.
Dudakovic dismissed the footage as “part of the [Bosnian Serb] propaganda war, that is still ongoing and is nothing new.”
After publication of the video, however, a criminal complaint was filed against Dudakovic by the then president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, Dragan Cavic, and the entity then prime minister, Milorad Dodik.
A popular Bosniak military commander, during the Bosnian war Dudakovic commanded the Bihac enclave in north-west Bosnia. After the war, he became the general commander of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina army.
According to the media, Ibrahim Nadarevic, another wartime commander and former Minister for Veterans’ Issues in the Federation entity government, was also arrested in Sarajevo.
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