Aleksandar Cvetkovic, a Bosnian Serb who moved to Israel in 2006 and who was arrested on Tuesday on charges of being a member of the firing squads that executed some 8,000 men and boys from Srebrenica, on Wednesday denied charges of massacring Bosnian Muslims, signalling he would fight extradition to face genocide charges in Sarajevo, Reuters reported.
Cvetkovic, who was a member of the Bosnian Serb army during the war, was arrested in Israel on Tuesday, at the request of the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian State Attorney's Office has already sent an extradition request and the necessary documentation.
Cvetkovic, who moved to Israel with his Jewish wife and their children in 2006, is accused of helping Bosnian Serb forces gun down about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Europe's worst massacre since World War Two, in the area which had been a U.N.-protected zone until it fell to the Serbs.
During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, Cvetkovic was a member of the Serb army's 10th Commando Unit whose members killed at least 1,000 Bosniak men and boys who were imprisoned on the Branjevo farm near Bratunac after Srebrenica fell into the hands of Serb forces.
Investigating the crime, Bosnian prosecutors established that Cvetkovic had been involved in the crime and that he was hiding in Israel, after which a request was issued for his arrest and extradition.
Layer for Cvetkovic Vadim Shub said his client was a driver for Bosnian Serb forces, but that he did not participate in the Srebrenica massacre.
He refutes all charges. He denies that he participated in any type war crime. He was a soldier, but he did not participate in any type of war crime, Shub said.
