Protest Filed with United Nations
GENEVA, April 10 (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency said on Wednesday it had sent a formal protest to Serbian authorities demanding the release of 13 Bosnian Muslims held as they were about to return to Bosnia from a refugee camp in Serbia. A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the 13 men were among 224 refugees from the former enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa who had been due to leave Sljivovica camp for the Bosnian city of Tuzla on Wednesday."This morning as we were loading them onto buses at Sljivovica, the Serbs took 13 of them and detained them. They said they wanted to investigate them for war crimes," UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told Reuterss. "We're extremely concerned about this. It's totally unacceptable. We've sent a note verbale to the government demanding their immediate release," Redmond added.
Redmond said the Sljivovica refugees were among almost 800 refugees from Srebrenica and Zepa who fled to Serbia after the eastern enclaves fell to the Bosnian Serbs last July. More than 500 have already been resettled abroad and 54 other refugees remain at Sljivovica awaiting resettlement. Of those, 27 are due to travel to Finland this weekend.
Were Refugees Held at Prison Camp
Redmond said the refugees had all been living at the camp since last September or October and had already been screened and cleared for repatriation by Serbian authorities. The other 211 refugees planning to return travelled to Muslim-held Tuzla in four buses, passing through Bosnian Serb territory without any incident, he added. "They all had valid visas and exit documents. We see no reason to detain them at the last minute," Redmond said. "If there are allegations of war crimes a dossier should be passed on to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. In the meantime they should be released and allowed to go back to Bosnia."There was no indication as to why Serbia had decided to detain the men minutes before they were due to leave the camp when they had already lived their for more than six months. International peace coordinator Carl Bildt confirmed earlier on Wednesday that Bosnian Serbs would be invited to a major reconstruction conference in Brussels this week after finally complying with terms for the release of prisoners of war. The latest detentions could threaten that participation and cut the Bosnian Serbs out of the reconstruction process. Berserkistan is a world news service of Michael Linder Productions, Inc.
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