Serb colonel denies genocide charge

Chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte and Blagojevic, right

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- Bosnian Serb army colonel Vidoje Blagojevic has pleaded not guilty to having played a role in the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.

Blagojevic, who was flown to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague last week, denied charges of genocide and crimes against humanity when he appeared before the court on Thursday.

Up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys are believed to have been killed around Srebrenica in Europe's worst atrocity since World War II. The males were captured after the U.N. so-called "safe-haven" fell to Serb forces in July 1995.

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Blagojevic commanded an infantry and engineering brigade in the Bosnian Serbs Drina Corps.

Dressed in a dark suit, shirt and tie, during a brief initial court appearance on Thursday, he pleaded not guilty on all eight counts, including complicity to genocide, extermination, murder, persecution, deportation and inhumane acts against Muslims.

Blagojevic, a former commander in the eastern Bosnian town of Bratunac, was arrested by British NATO forces last Friday as he arrived for a meeting with international officials.

Blagojevic had been secretly indicted alongside Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic in November 1998.

The tribunal for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia gained its first genocide conviction just over a week ago, finding Krstic guilty of playing a part in the massacre of 8,000 men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995.

In the first ruling to classify the massacre as genocide, Krstic was sentenced to 46 years in prison.

Blagojevic's Drina Corps operated under Krstic's command, the indictment said.

In one of the most gruesome events detailed in the indictment, Bosnian Serb soldiers, allegedly under Blagojevic's command, slaughtered hundreds of Muslim prisoners in the infamous Kravica warehouse massacre on July 13.

The Bratunac brigade was also responsible for other executions around Srebrenica, prosecutors allege.

NATO said in a statement that the arrest was another step in its "drive to arrest the remaining war crime indictees and reflects NATO's commitment to bringing to justice those who perpetrated war crimes and atrocities".

On Wednesday, another Bosnian Serb army officer wanted over the Srebrenica massacre was flown to The Hague for trial after he turned himself in to the U.N. court.

Lieutenant-Colonel Dragan Jokic, wartime head of the engineering section of the Zvornik brigade, gave himself up on Wednesday morning to U.N. officials at a NATO base, his lawyer Krstan Simic told Reuters news agency.

Jokic, who is accused of crimes against humanity and breaches of the laws and customs of war, made the decision to surrender after being questioned last month as a suspect by U.N. investigators, Simic said.