Bosnia's war crimes court sentenced Bosnian Serb Dragan Damjanovic to 20 years in prison today for crimes including murder, torture and rape committed against Muslims during the country's 1992-95 war.
Damjanovic, 45, was found guilty on six out of seven counts of the indictment, the court said in a statement. He is the ninth person convicted by the war crimes court since its launch last year and the third this week.
Damjanovic was convicted for torturing and beating prisoners in two detention camps in the Serb-held Vogosca neighbourhood of Sarajevo in 1992 and 1993, the statement said.
"The accused used detainees for forced labour and as human shields and some of them were killed," it said. He also broke, with two other men, into a Muslim couple's home where he raped the wife.
Damjanovic was acquitted of the murder of another Muslim couple, the court said.
The war crimes court sentenced late on Thursday former Bosnian Croat military commander Nikola Andrun to 13 years in jail for torture of non-Croat civilians held in a detention camp in the southern Herzegovina region.
On Wednesday, it sentenced another Bosnian Serb, Nedjo Samardzic, to 24 years in jail for crimes against Muslims early in the war in the eastern town of Foca after his original sentence of 13 years and four month was overturned.
The court was established in 2005 to alleviate some of the workload from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. It is taking over low and mid-level cases as the Hague court winds down by 2010.
About two dozen suspects are being tried or are awaiting trial at the Bosnian war crimes court.