Global Policy Forum

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic and Genevieve Roberts

One of the most feared members of the Bosnian-Serb army, who was accused of decapitating between 80 and 100 Muslims in 1995 and of carrying out the Srebrenica massacre, was arrested yesterday on genocide charges. Ljubisa Beara, one of the most senior army officers to fall into the United Nations war crimes tribunal's hands in recent years, is accused of playing a major role in the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. According to the war crimes indictment, Mr Beara, 65, participated in the murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslim boys and men who were captured trying to escape from Srebrenica after the UN Dutch battalion failed to protect them.

Mr Beara's men are said to have transported about 1,000 Bosnian Muslim men from the school at Grbavci to a nearby field, where the prisoners were summarily executed. "On 14 and 15 July 1995, members of the Zvornik Brigade Engineering Company used heavy equipment to bury the victims in mass graves at the execution site, while the executions continued," the indictment states. "On the evening of 14 July, lights from the engineering machinery illuminated the execution and burial sites during the executions."

Mr Beara is one of seven fugitives sought for the massacre. He faces six counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, murder, persecutions and forced transfers. He could be sentenced to life imprisonment if convicted on any charge. Srebrenica was Europe's worst atrocity since the end of the Second World War and the indictment against Mr Beara gives details of dozens of incidents and hundreds of murders by forces under his command, including one in nearby Potocari where up to 100 Muslims were beheaded on 12 July 1995.

Mr Beara was colonel and chief of security in the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA). BSA forces executed the entire male population of Srebrenica aged between 16 and 60, in July 1995. Mr Beara's superior, General Ratko Mladic, the commander of the BSA, is still at large. General Mladic and the former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic are the tribunal's most wanted fugitives.

The Serbian government announced Mr Beara's "surrender" and transfer to the tribunal late on Saturday. The government said: "After having spoken to Serbian Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic, Ljubisa Beara surrendered to the Serbian authorities on Saturday in order to protect state interest and his family." The Serbian government provided broadcasters with footage apparently showing the indictee saying goodbye to his family at Belgrade airport. However the footage shows Mr Beara shaking hands with his wife and son, as if he had not seen them for some time. A spokeswoman for the prosecution, Florence Hartmann, denied that Mr Beara had surrendered. She told the Serbian media: "He was arrested in Serbia and didn't put up any resistance."

Analysts say the transfer of Mr Beara to the tribunal could be an overture for more arrests or surrenders of alleged war criminals. A key condition for launching the first stage towards EU membership for Serbia and Montenegro is better co-operation with the tribunal.