At Least 9 of 13 Expected to be Freed
BELGRADE, April 19 (Reuters) — Serbian authorities have decided to release at least nine of 13 Bosnian Muslim refugees detained last week as they were preparing to return home, a U.N. spokesman said on Friday. But the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) spokesman Marwan Elkhoury said the Yugoslav government wanted to keep the remaining four in detention because they were under investigation for or had been witnesses to war crimes. He said a fifth Muslim refugee taken into custody earlier was also being held with the group.The 13 were detained on April 10 as they prepared to board buses to Bosnia with more than 200 other refugees from the Bosnian enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa who had been at a camp in Serbia for about eight months. "Obviously we are pleased that nine can go home," Elkhoury told Reuterss. "But we are still requesting the immediate release of all 14 together."
A UNHCR spokesman in Geneva quoted Belgrade officials as saying they had been in touch with the war crimes tribunal in The Hague over the remaining four. "They (the Belgrade authorities) have had more than eight months to investigate these men, and still they have nothing, so we don't think this is justified," Elkhoury said. "We consider this a violation of all the earlier agreements — Dayton, the Rome Accord and the Refugee Convention."
The UNHCR is preparing the paperwork for the refugees to be released, which Elkhoury said should take 24 hours. The agency expected to fly them out of Belgrade on Saturday afternoon to Bosnia, via the Croatian capital Zagreb. "We don't want to take them overland across Bosnian Serb territory where there is a risk that they could be arrested by police there," he said.
All the refugees were survivors of the Bosnian Serb conquest of the U.N.-declared "safe areas" of Zepa and Srebrenica. They later fled into Serbian-led Yugoslavia. Belgrade considers them to be foreign soldiers, and not refugees. The UNHCR said the detentions violated the Dayton peace accords and it sent an envoy to Belgrade on Tuesday to try to persuade the Foreign Ministry to release the men. After the talks, the envoy said the Serbian government in the rump Yugoslavia had promised all would soon be allowed to go free. The detainees were being held in a high-security wing of the Padinska Skela detention centre in Belgrade. "These men have been through a horrific episode in the war, and now all they want to do is go home," Elkhoury said. "It is extremely important because almost all the men in those areas were killed and the women and children need the support of the survivors.''
Apr 10 · In Serbia, Bosnians are Detained
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