THE UN criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia yesterday charged three Bosnian Muslims and a Croat with war crimes, its first indictment for crimes against Serb victims.
The tribunal said that three of the four men, two of whom were arrested in Germany and Austria earlier this week, were responsible for running the Celebici camp at Konjic in central Bosnia.
The charges against the four for crimes against Serbs mark an important step for the tribunal, which has repeatedly rejected accusations of bias against Serbs.
The tribunal said that Bosnian Muslim and Croat forces attacked the predominantly Muslim town of Konjic in May 1992, rounding up Serbs and holding them at the Celebici camp. Previous reports said that 250 detainees were held there.
"Detainees were killed, tortured, sexually assaulted . . . and "eaten," the tribunal said in its indictment.
It said Zejnil Delalic (47), who was arrested by German police in Munich last Monday, commanded a unit of the Bosnian Muslim forces from June to November, 1992. It accused him of overall responsibility for the crimes committed by his subordinates, including the murder of at least 14 Serbs and various acts of torture and rape.
Camp commander Zdravko Mucic (41), arrested in Vienna last Monday and identified yesterday as a Bosnian Croat, was also charged with the 14 murders. Hazim Delic (31), deputy to Mucic, was accused of four murders, torture and rape, while the fourth accused, 23 year old camp guard Esad Landzo, was charged with five murders.
Landzo and Delic were accused of beating men to death with wooden planks, baseball bats, shovels and pieces of cable, and of torturing detainees, many in their 60s and 70s, with pliers, fuses, corrosives, electrical currents and hot metal pincers.
On one occasion they were said to have nailed a Muslim political badge to a man's forehead, among a catalogue of other mutilations. Delic was also twice charged with multiple rape.
Mr Chartier said that Delic and Landzo were still at large, but the Bosnian authorities had "given assurances that the accused will be arrested and surrendered to the tribunal".
The latest indictments bring the total number of those charged by the tribunal to 57.
The US ambassador to the United Nations, Ms Madeleine Albright, shocked after seeing human remains at a suspected mass grave site in north east Bosnia, urged action yesterday to ensure that war crimes investigations were not impeded.
Ms Albright, accompanied by a forensic expert and the Nato peacekeeping commander in Bosnia, Admiral Leighton Smith, was shown the grave in Serb held territory. "It's the most disgusting and horrifying sight for another human being to see," Ms Albright said after visiting the field at Branjevo collective farm, south of the village of Janja.
Ms Albright was shown leg bones, a hand and a spine poking through the soil and a body so badly decomposed that even its sex was not identifiable. Investigators believed the remains belonged to people missing since Bosnian Serbs captured the nearby Muslim town of Srebrenica last year.
US aerial surveillance photographs showed bodies strewn in the field at Branjevo after Srebrenica's fall.
The Bosnian Serb army has been accused of killing between 3,000 and 8,000 Muslim males who disappeared after surrendering.