A former Bosnian Serb commander convicted of aiding genocide in Srebrenica has died after the car he was travelling in veered off the road and plunged into a river.
The crash happened in the town of Kladanj, in Tuzla Canton, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on 15th February.
According to the Ministry of Interior of Tuzla Canton, the vehicle left the roadway and ended up in a river.
Ostoja Stanisic was pulled from the water and resuscitated in an ambulance, but his death was confirmed at a local health centre.
An autopsy has been ordered.
Stanisic was a former commander of the Sixth Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade of the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war.
In 2018, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina sentenced him to five years in prison for aiding genocide in Srebrenica.
He had initially been sentenced to 11 years in 2017, but after a retrial his sentence was reduced to five years.
According to the final verdict, he was found guilty of knowingly assisting members of the Army and police of Republika Srpska, including Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, in carrying out a plan to permanently and forcibly remove the Bosniak civilian population from the United Nations-protected zone of Srebrenica.
The ruling stated that up to 40,000 Bosniak civilians were forcibly transferred from the Srebrenica enclave and that more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys were summarily killed.
The court also found that on 14th and 15th July 1995, members of the Sixth Battalion under Stanisic’s supervision took part in the reception and guarding of several hundred captured men from Srebrenica, who were detained in a school without basic conditions, subjected to beatings, and that at least 20 of them were killed.
Stanisic was released on 1st July 2020, after serving two-thirds of his sentence following a decision by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.
