SEVEN Bosnian Muslims were beaten and tortured by police and civilians at a Bosnian Serb police station last week after being handed over to the Serbs by Ifor troops, a UN spokesman said yesterday.
The seven, who claim to be from the fallen town of Srebrenica, were "beaten to a pulp" by Serb police and men in civilian clothing once they were in Serb hands, a UN spokesman, Mr Alexander Ivanko, said. The men had surrendered to a US army unit on May 10th.
The UN official accused Serb authorities in the hardline eastern town of Zvornik of ordering the beatings to extract "confessions that the seven had been involved in the alleged murder of a group of four Serb woodcutters in the area a few days earlier.
This was "torture, administered, urged and allowed for the purpose of obtaining a confession," Mr Ivanko said.
The back of one of the men is "completely blue" from his beating, the spokesman said. Others have broken ribs. One man told UN police and human rights monitors he had been "beaten from 10 at night till six in the morning" at the police station, he added.
The group has become known as the "Zvornik Seven" because they were initially taken to the Serb police station in the eastern town of Zvornik.
Serbs have charged at least three of the group with murdering civilians.
The Sarajevo government says the men were refugees from Srebrenica, a Muslim enclave which fell to Serb forces in July 1995, and had hidden in the forest over the winter and were trying to cross into Bosnia's Muslim Croat federation.
Nato insists the men were an armed group and as such, under the Dayton peace agreement, had to be surrendered to Serb authorities, across whose territory they were moving on foot.
Mr Ivanko said that although the men were no longer being beaten, they had not yet been allowed to see a lawyer.
That raised the question of whether Nato forces acted too hastily in handing the seven Muslims over to the Serbs.
Nato forces held the Muslims for just a few hours and admit they cannot rule out the possibility that some or all were refugees from the Serb massacre at Srebrenica, attempting to make it to Bosnian government lines.
Nato spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Max Marriner said yesterday that while Nato forces had learned some lessons, they legally had little choice.
"After 72 hours we have to hand over to the authorities. Dayton (peace agreement) requires this," Marriner explained.
About 8,000 people are still missing and unaccounted for from Srebrenica. Human rights experts say thousands were executed and buried in mass graves by Serb forces after the town fell last year.
. The UN criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, said yesterday it would hear evidence against the Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, and his military chief, Gen Ratko Mladic, next month under it's "Rule 61" procedure.
Dr Karadzic and Gen Mladic have been indicted twice in their absence by the tribunal. They are accused of being responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity in connection with the siege of Sarajevo and the fall last year of the UN "safe area" at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
"Rule 61 is a reminder that the accused are charged with crimes which demand a legal accounting," the tribunal spokesman, Mr Christian Chartier, said.
"It is a reminder to the international community to keep its word and enforce its own decisions following the Dayton agreement," he added.
Rule 61 hearings do not amount to a trial in the absence of the accused. This is not allowed under the tribunal's statute.
Mr Karadzic is caught up in a round of political manoeuvring after he dismissed his moderate prime minister, Mr Rajko Kasagic, and replaced him with a hardliner last week.
On Sunday, aides to Mr Carl Bildt, the international community's High Representative for Bosnia, said he had been promised that Mr Karadzic would "step out of public life and will not be seen or heard."