Bosnia's war crimes court acquitted on Friday three Bosnian Serb wartime officials, including a former regional prime minister, of crimes against humanity due to lack of evidence. Gojko Klickovic, Mladen Drljaca and Jovan Ostojic were indicted for an alleged criminal enterprise to drive out non-Serbs from western Bosnia in order to create exclusively Serb territory early in 1992-95 war.

But the prosecution failed to prove their responsibility, the court panel headed by judge Zoran Bozic ruled. "The evidence has not proven a joint criminal enterprise," Bozic said.

Bozic said prosecutors did not substantiate their case that the defendants' acts were part of a widespread and systematic attack against non-Serb civilians in the town of Bosanska Krupa, rather than a series of incidents.

Klickovic was the highest-ranking official in the wartime administration of Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to be tried for war crimes. Karadzic is on trial at the Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide against Muslims.

After the war, Klickovic served for a time as prime minister of the Serb Republic, an autonomous region that makes up Bosnia along with the Muslim-Croat federation.

Klickovic, Drljaca and Ostojic were senior officials in Bosanska Krupa when Bosnian Serb forces detained and murdered dozens of Muslim civilians after the war broke out.

"The defence has not denied that these crimes were committed but the prosecution did not prove that the accused were responsible for them," Bozic said.

During the conflict, Bosnian Serbs persecuted non-Serbs to create an exclusive Serb statelet, creating a model of ethnic cleansing later adopted by some other groups in the country.

The Sarajevo court has acquitted several other Serb former senior officials of war crimes, including Karadzic's justice minister Momcilo Mandic, for lack of evidence.

Analysts have criticised prosecutors for poor preparation of their cases. Another problem is the growing number of witnesses who have died, moved abroad or are reluctant to testify.

Klickovic expressed regret for the victims in Bosanska Krupa, saying many of them were neighbours, friends and colleagues. "Those who have committed these crimes must answer for them and be severely punished. I was just a politician. In the war, force rules and politics is pushed behind."

Serb apologies for Croatian massacre

On a separate occasion, Serbian President Boris Tadic on Thursday apologised for war crimes in Vukovar, the site of the bloodiest episode of the 1990s conflict in Croatia.

"I am here to pay respects to the victims and to express words of apology and regret," Tadic said at the Ovcara memorial, a notorious site where around 200 people were gunned down and buried in a mass grave in 1991.

In the past year Tadic and his Croatian counterpart Ivo Josipovic have visited several symbolic war sites in Bosnia and Croatia to honour the victims and expressed their regrets.

The European Union, which both Zagreb and Belgrade hope to join, is pressing for reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia which was torn apart by war in the 1990s.

Source: Reuters/AFP