12,000 Bosnians could be charged with war crimes: US official

0 Comments | AFP, June, 2007

SARAJEVO (AFP) — Some 12,000 people in Bosnia could face local courts on charges of atrocities committed during its inter-ethnic war in the 1990s, US war crimes ambassador Clint Williamson said Thursday.

"It is a huge caseload and prosecutors must decide who will be prosecuted and who, unfortunately, will not," Williamson, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, told the Dnevni Avaz newspaper in an interview.

The cases were to be processed by Bosnia's local courts to ease the burden on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, set up to prosecute war crimes committed during the 1990s Balkans conflicts.

Although Bosnia's war ended more than a decade ago, the UN tribunal is still searching for five war crimes...