A Bosnian war crimes court jailed two Bosnian Serb wartime commanders to 19 and 15 years respectively for taking part in the mass killing, detention and torture of Muslims in eastern Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
Ratko Bundalo, the ex-commander of a Serb military group in the eastern town of Kalinovik, was sentenced to 19 years in prison for supervising the detention of around 300 people, many of whom were killed or went missing.
Nedjo Zeljaja, a wartime police chief in Kalinovik, was jailed for 15 years for joining a criminal enterprise with Bundalo and others with the clear aim of persecuting Muslim Bosniaks, said Stanisa Gluhajic, the chairman of the court.
The third man who was indicted along with the duo, Djordjislav Askraba, was acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Mr Gluhajic said about 100 civilians had been murdered in the Kalinovik area from April 1992 until March 1993, dozens went missing while women, some of them minors, were raped.
"They realised persecution to accomplish their common goal. This persecution had been discriminatory towards the Bosniak population," Mr Gluhajic said.
During the Bosnian war, Bosnian Serb forces conducted a policy of so-called ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from territories they planned for their exclusively Serb state.
Some 100,000 people were killed during the conflict, most of them Muslims.
Reuters